


A Bartonian Menace

by Pohadka



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Bucky Barnes in Bucharest, Deaf Clint Barton, I tagged only major characters, M/M, Slow Burn, Street Kids, character specific violence, child mastermind, google translate fail, urchin gang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 04:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12976374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pohadka/pseuds/Pohadka
Summary: If you're Clint Barton, you kind of expect things to go wrong the moment you walk out your door.  If you're on the run from the maybe-SHIELD, but maybe Hydra outfit you used to work for, well, you'd be ready to blow things up too.It's being fished out of a dumpster by a group of kids led by a former assassin that really trips up your grasp of reality, if you think too hard on it.  So he doesn't.





	1. The Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Winterhawk Reverse Big Bank. Inspired by Art from [PurpleArrowAwwNo](http://purplearrowawwno.tumblr.com) on Tumblr.
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> Beta read by the awesome FoolishNotions and Floriana who own my eternal devotion.
> 
> More notes at the bottom! Some Romanian is used as well. Translations also at the bottom/end.

There was almost enough time to make a list of how the day surprised him before the world swirled around him and went black. First, Clint certainly didn’t expect Hydra in the cute little Bucharest neighborhood he was scoping out. Never stop looking for new bolt holes, one of his most treasured rules. 

Second, he didn’t expect the cute little bolt hole to be over a hideout of Hydra’s own. Which of course, he had to blow up before he made a run for it. He actually made it a full four streets away before a bullet punched into his left shoulder, causing his jump to become a stumble off the edge of the roof.

Third, he didn’t expect it to be one of his old Delta Strike Force teammates to put the bullet through his shoulder. Although let’s be honest, Stephenson had always had lousy aim. 

Bouncing off the neighboring building’s wall was expected, as was the half somersault into an open dumpster. Do they call them dumpsters in Romania? 

Those thoughts went flying as his bleeding shoulder slammed into the top of the dumpster. That move, at least, flipped him onto his back before his entire body squelched into something not quite liquid, but not quite solid either. The lid slammed down on top above him, giving him cover for the moment. 

Clint thought he heard voices a few minutes later, but that was when time started going sideways.

#

The lid of the dumpster squeaked a bit as it was lifted. Clint blinked awake, intending to move and crawl out to defend himself, but his legs didn’t want to cooperate. 

A face slowly came into view. The sky behind the face was much darker than it had been, only lit by the docking bay lamp a few feet away. The light was behind the person, so all he could make out was a hood with long hair falling out of it. “Ngh,” Clint tried as a warning.

The person didn’t move. Obviously, they weren’t sufficiently fluent in Bartonese to know when they were being told to fuck off. 

Then the silhouette did move, going completely out of view. But the lid was left propped up, so at least Clint now had a vague idea of which end was up. 

Something squeaked outside. It sounded like a wheel. He tried to figure that one out, but then the person was back. They were a lot closer now, leaning in to look at him. And they looked a lot bigger.

Clint reached up with his good arm to swat at them, but all he caught was the sleeve of a hoodie. The person took that as permission and suddenly Clint was moving again. He kicked, trying to extricate his legs and help, but it felt like Steve or Thor was lifting him up. That meant safety somewhere in the fuzziness of his brain. Without realizing it, Clint went limp and let whoever it was pull him out. 

When he could collect his thoughts again, he was spread out on the ground beside a pretzel cart. The incongruity of it all made him start to laugh, until he felt two firm fingers press against his shoulder. That made him scream until he passed out again. 

#

 

It was the pain that woke him up. Not sound, because his hearing aids were gone. But he was warm. He smelled a fire, wet dirt, the ozone of rain. Years of waking up in strange places with bullet wounds made him wary, so he only opened his eyes a fraction. The first thing to come into focus was the underside of a bridge. Old, and wet. Water was trickling down the inside of it, but well away from where he was. 

Clint turned his head slowly, looking around to assess his surroundings. His gear was on the other side of the fire, a large figure obscured by a formless black hoodie looking it over. The gun was in pieces, but Clint didn’t mind that. What he did mind was what looked to be his hearing aids in six pieces. “Aw, hoodie guy, no.” 

The figure turned, staring at him. “Uh, I said that out loud? I kinda need those.” Clint pushed up slowly, wincing at the shocks through his shoulder. He took a chance to look at it, but someone had cleaned it out and wrapped it up. The bandaging wasn’t as neat as Phil would have liked (ow), but it was firm and tight. “Looks good. Thanks. But uh,” Clint paused to tap his ears. “I’m deaf. Wait, do you understand English? Cause my Romanian’s really bad.” 

The figure didn’t move. The way they were positioned, the light and the hoodie kept their face out of sight. Clint sensed that they were staring at him, but that was about it. His shoulder throbbed to keep him from thinking further than that. He was warm, dry, and bandaged. Seemed friendly enough.

“Ah, yeah. Okay, in Romanian then.” Clint tapped his ear again before trying “Sunt supărat.” 

Now the figured moved, shoulders hitching as if they were laughing. Clint thought maybe they were speaking, but he still couldn’t see their mouth to lip read. “Yeah, it’s really bad. Can I… Can I please have the hearing aid part back?” He tried the face that always worked on Nat, batting his eyelashes and pouting like a five-year-old. 

The figure shook its head, then turned away. One hand came out to sort through the pieces, then gently tossed them into Clint’s lap. 

Clint looked them over carefully, nodding. It was exactly as he asked, just the hearing aid basic, without his usual communications module from Stark or the translator module, also from Stark. Carefully, he fit them into place with his right hand. Figures that Asshole Traitor would shoot him in his dominant shoulder. 

Once they were in place, he turned them on slowly. He heard the crackle of the fire first, then the rain outside, with just a bit of wind. Soft mutters of voices just out of range were almost obscured by the sound of cars above their head, but on their level, it was quiet. “Thanks. Really. Okay. You speak English?”

“Better than your Romanian.” A long pause, then, “You were not smothered.” The voice came slow, and Clint had to turn his aids up more to hear it. Definitely masculine, with an American accent, and a little bit amused. 

“Yeah. Sorry about that.” Clint saw a battered thermos at his side. He picked it up carefully, popping the top to inspect the contents. To his regret, it was just plain water, no coffee. But it was wet. At the first sip he realized how dry his mouth had been. “Thanks, again. For... Everything?” 

The other guy didn’t reply, just stared at him. 

“Look, once it’s morning, I promise, I’ll get out of your hair. You can keep all the cash in my pockets, and I can get more?” 

“You’re SHIELD?” 

Clint had to laugh. “Hell, I don’t even know if I’m American anymore. SHIELD went tits up ‘cause of guys like the asshole who shot me.” Clint took another sip, slowly. Nat’s voice nagged at him in the back of his head about being careful.

“Hydra.” The word had meaning to this guy, from the way it was twisted and spit out. “They’re here?” 

Clint nodded slowly. The guy had tensed up at that. The water was helping him focus, and he realized that anything that could be seriously counted as a projectile weapon was on that side of the fire. “I’ve been hunting them. I’ve got scores to settle.” He turned to take another peek at his shoulder. “This was just a love tap compared to all the other bullshit they’ve pulled.”

“Are you… an Avenger?” The pause was interesting. The word came out slow and careful. Kind of how Clint felt about calling himself that. Or a hero. 

“Sometimes. I’m Clint.” He tried for a smile, well aware that he still smelled like the rancid grease that had been in the dumpster.

The guy pulled back, tugging at the hood, almost like he was compacting himself. Clint could hear just the barest thread of a murmur. He had the blanket he was sitting on, the boot next to him, the bottle of water, and pebbles poking him in the thigh as a weapon. Then he caught the thread. It danced through English and Russian, but it sounded like a status report. // Clint. Clint Barton. Hawkeye. Arrow Guy. SHIELD. Fights with…// The words slowed into a stutter, then went silent. The sudden twist to grab a backpack made him back up a bit. The guy dug around for a second, then pulled out a notebook and began to write. 

A whisper to the side made Clint tense up, despite the flare of pain through his shoulder. Three people, no, three kids, slid into their culvert, moving over to stand between him and the other man. That one never looked up, but the three tiny bodyguards stared at him hard, so he stared back. 

They were ragged, and smelled like the street to his senses. Two carried bats and the smallest held the handle of a knife just their size. “So, you’re the bodyguards, huh? Good.” He smiled and toasted them with his thermos, and took another sip. “I’m staying right here.”

The oldest looked to be maybe fifteen. The youngest couldn’t be more than nine. And none of them reacted to his words. 

Clint just sat watching them back, instinctively knowing how to disarm them if they rushed him. Three kids wouldn’t do anything to him unless he let it, but he had no reason to hurt them. 

The other guy though, he was a puzzle to chew on. But just as Clint was settling his teeth into that, he started to move. Hidden by the kids, Clint missed the move, but he felt the dart sting him on the side of the neck, the concoction working quickly to fade out the colors. “Aw, no sleep! I’m good!” he murmured as he slowly tilted sideways. 

“Gyerünk,” was the last thing he heard before a face loomed over his. Dark hair hung out the side of the hoodie. Gloved hands steered him backwards onto the blanket. And the clearest look yet at the bearded face. The eyes, there was something he needed to tell…

“Oh no, not you. I’m in so much trouble with Steve.” Then sleep forced the beautiful face into darkness.

#

Clint woke up when the sun burned into his face. The culvert was empty. The knockout juice made him woozy, so he took his time sitting up. 

There was the blanket from his own pack over him. The patched and lumpy sleeping bag beneath him came from somewhere else. His backpack sat next to him. And beside it was his bow case and he reached for it first. Inside, his bow and quiver were untouched. But there was a bit of paper pinched in between the arrow shafts.

Clint teased it out with his good hand, sitting to rest his left elbow on his knee to ease the pressure. He was careful to spread out the paper, but it still smeared the thick pencil lines.

A map. Downtown Bucharest, with an X four blocks away from the building he blew up. Next to the X was the Hydra symbol with a slash over it. No more Hydra there? No Hydra allowed? Here there be Medusa? Clint wasn’t sure, but he knew he’d be checking it out.

Later. His comm modules had been left in the case too, so he slipped them in and tapped into a very private channel. “Elmo, checking in. Still alive.”

“Mist here. Where did you go?” Her voice was amused, but distant. She’d worried about him. Awww. 

“Down a rabbit hole. Gonna stay here a few days.” There was something about the night before, dancing just out of reach.

“Roger that. I’ll let you know when it’s safe.” 

“Right, about that.”

“Clint…” Her tone dropped.

“I have some snake heads to skin here.” Hydra. Always needed killing. But there was that other thing. What was it?

A slow pause. “Be careful?”

“Me?” He poked his shoulder and hissed, then rolled his back and groaned. “I’m always careful.” 

#

Clint didn’t go straight to the mark. He went in a circle first, around from the culvert to reorient himself. His spare jacket from his bag was enough to hide his shoulder, but nothing could hide the two kids tailing him. 

Oh, they were good, for trainees. It took him a few minutes to catch them. But once he marked them, he never lost sight of them again. He recognized the littlest one from the night before, this time with an older girl. They followed him cautiously, staying a good dozen feet behind when he found himself in a morning crowd. Okay by him. He didn’t really want to scare the big guy off. 

But he did duck into the first flop house he found. Euros didn’t get him anything here, but enough leu got him a room without a name on it, with a promise of actual hot water.

The warmth of the water was a lie, but it ran, and it was clean, and he was more than grateful to finally get the smell of sour milk off of himself. 

He took his time after the shower to inspect the patch job. The entry wound had been cauterized, while the exit had been created to get the bullet out, then closed with tiny, neat stitches. Thank god for blackouts and not waking up for that. Clint set his mind on chasing down that face from the haze. 

Just as he finished rewrapping his shoulder, the memory of those eyes resurfaced finally. Dark, blank, yet somehow warm. The hard brows above the eyes and the clean line of the nose below them fill in as well. 

Well then. Now he’s got a new responsibility to make sure this ends well. “I mean, if the guy’s building an urchin army, there’s gotta be a reason, right? It’s not like he’s the first assassin in history to go to ground with the best eyes around.” 

Clint looked at his reflection in the dirty mirror, eyeballing his shoulder. Four days before he could even think of holding the bow. He’d need guns at some point. Maybe letting his beard grow in would be good. The real question is should he lighten his hair to Rogers blonde to bring in the resemblance, or darken his hair to Banner brown to hide it? It wouldn’t be the first time they’d used that ruse. 

Oh Steve, don’t hate me? 

#

In the end, he chose to do neither. 

It took a little work, but he got his arm into the jacket normally, with his shoulder as tightly packed and wrapped as he could get it. A peek out the window rewarded him with the sight of the first two kids joined by a third, all suspiciously interested in the door to his current shelter, so he opted to go out the roof. The bow got stashed at a local train station, one of his many drop sites across Europe. Another drop site at a mini-storage site gave him fresh clothes and fresh identities, along with a multitude of gear and cash. This one was on a list of spots that he and Natasha shared. If he gave himself time to think about it, he thought he could maybe pinpoint a Fury drop too, but he didn’t think he’d need to call in THAT much firepower. 

Then he went back over the roofs to the flop house and back out the front door to pick up his pint-sized surveillance detail. Clint felt a little guilty about making his next stop be one of the street vendors to fill up on pretzels and pizza (street pizza, what an amazing thing), but he was starving too. He needed carbs and protein to help his shoulder heal up. The go-go juice cocktail he’d gotten with his gear helped a lot too. Just sucked by making everything smell like wool sweaters. 

He decided to dawdle and go past the building he blew up the day before. Cops and firemen were still all over the site, but he couldn’t make any of them as Hydra or SHIELD. It was just an apartment building, but he still felt twitchy. Like he was missing half the story. 

So, he walked the next four blocks over to the marked building from the map.

It was a factory. A very private factory. The sign out front said ARO, and it certainly looked like a machinery parts place. 

Most of the locals avoided the door. Clint did too. 

Across the street he saw a way up. It hurt his shoulder badly as he scrabbled up the side of the building. But the roof gave a decent view. Hydra knew that. That’s why they posted both a human and digital sentry.

The human was down with a strange bend to their neck. And the digital had a blind spot. 

The hooded figure from the night before stood in that blind spot, staring down at the factory across the street. Another kid stood watching his back, then whispered softly to the figure when Clint popped up onto the roof. 

Neither of them shot him, so Clint crossed over to join them.

Hoodie didn’t look up, just pointed across the street with his chin. His hands were shoved into the pockets of the hoodie, and his shoulders were tight with tension. Clint could see movement behind the blacked-out windows, so he dug a SHIELD scanner out of his bag. Many heat signatures bloomed on the screen. Several blue indicators too, and he couldn’t help but shiver. Anything related to the Chitauri put the creepy feel of Loki in his brain, so he shut it off fast. “Yuck. That’s not good.”

“Yours?” Hoodie asked. 

“Nope. And no one else’s, once I’m done here,” Clint promised.

“Huh.” Hoodie murmured, then poked one rigid finger into the bullet hole in Clint’s shoulder.

Clint swallowed down the scream and stepped away, glaring at Hoodie. “Yeah, I know. But I got this. I’ll get this done.”

Hoodie twitched, just as Clint figured he would. Maybe Steve had been right about this guy. Maybe Clint’s intended tactics would work. 

“We’ll see.” Hoodie turned and stepped off the edge of the roof. The kid who’d been his lookout just smirked and followed him over. The loud crunch and groan of a distressed fire escape echoed between the buildings.

Clint didn’t bother to look over at them, just sighed. Great. So, the Winter Soldier liked to torment him and maybe he was still Bucky Barnes inside there somewhere, but he clearly wasn’t ready to help him out yet.

Clint knew he could cheat and call out the big guns. But he wanted to do this for Steve. He owed him, after Loki. After all that.

Clint paid his debts. This one would wipe several slates clean.

But first, Hydra. 

He turned on his scanner again and knelt to start planning.

#

If his shoulder wasn’t hurt, he’d just stroll up to the roof with a pack of explosive arrows and take care of it from there. This time, he had to think like Natasha. That hurt. Finesse was her game, not his. 

Clint found himself a new bolt hole with a coffee maker, and a little street bike for transport. There were always at least two kids watching the place. No problem. Just... Kids. He remembered being the lookout for Barney at that age. Freezing in all sorts of weather, but mostly, always hungry. But maybe an easy way inside their operations too.

He started with the little blonde kid. The fierceness in the kid’s face reminded him of all the pre-serum photos of Cap, and he wondered if that had occurred to Barnes or not. 

The kid was fast with a knife too. Clint almost dropped the pizza box when he popped into the kid’s perch on the rooftop across from his squat, cause the kid flashed out with the knife and neatly sliced the waist of Clint’s new hoodie.

“Aww no, hey. It’s okay. Friend! Pizza!” Clint held out the box as he squatted down to be eye to eye with the kid. “You speak English?” 

~Fucknut, who the fuck does that?~ The kid spat at him in Romanian. Clint was glad he fixed Stark’s translator. 

“I’m sorry, okay? Sajnálom.” He gestured with the box, then opened the lid to let the heat and smell of melted cheese and dough waft over to the kid. “Pizza?” 

The kid was tougher than he ever had been. He didn’t move. “I promise, it’s good. No funny business.” 

The kid kept staring. “Okay, fine, here.” Clint turned the box and opened it up, picking up a slice at random to bite into. “Mmm good. I wanna share.” 

Clint sat back, savoring his slice, moaning a little at the heat. “S’good. Rest is all yours.” 

The kid finally shifted, the knife still pointed in Clint’s direction. “Why?”

“I remember being hungry. Hating it. And I wanna buy information.” He shrugged and grinned. “I’m Clint. What’s your name? Uh... mi a neved?”

The kid stared a little more, then one hand crept out to the box. His dominant hand never shifted with the knife. Bucky had to be training them. “A nevum Vali.” 

“Nice to meet you Vali.” Clint finished off the slice, then slowly pushed the box the rest of the way to the kid. 

The kid held for another two minutes. Clint was impressed. Maybe kid Natasha could’ve held out this way. Or maybe American kids were the softest in the world, even on the street. The first slice of pizza went slowly, but the second went faster. Third was even better because Vali finally put his knife down to use both hands to steady the box and eat.

Clint sat quietly, nodding as he looked out at his squat. It was a good view point, better than he expected. He could even see into the bathroom, but not the bedroom. Which was good, because no kid needed to see that. He made a mental note to quit walking around naked too. Then he looked back at the kid. 

The look on his face was different. Flushed from the heat of the pizza and the full belly. Not so hostile. He remembered that too, how Coulson chose to feed him first before interrogating. The ache that thought brought up was old and familiar, but no longer stung so much.

“You guys got decent pizza over here, I’ll give you that.” Clint dipped his chin, then cocked his head to the side. “How’s your English?”

 

“Okay. Maybe not so fast.” Vali wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, staring up at him. “What you want?”

“I want you to ask your boss how much of your surveillance information on that factory I can have. I can pay. Tell him I want to take it out this week.” 

He waited to give Vali time to digest that, then pulled out the tiny translation module of his hearing aid, then tapped it to repeat his words in Romanian. Vali’s eyes went wide at that, but nodded. “Okay. I ask.”

“Thanks.” Clint wanted to ruffle the kid’s hair, but he knew better. He’d get sliced again. Instead, he pulled out two hundred leu and put them on the box top. “Reporting fee.” He saluted the kid, then let him watch how he got the drop on him, by climbing back up the railing and over the back of the fire escape. It hurt like a bitch, but his shoulder was starting to heal up. A couple more doses of the go-go juice wouldn’t hurt.

#

Clint nearly sliced the kid back the next morning when he found Vali sitting on his kitchen table, looking over the map and scraps of data he’d put together so far. Okay, so maybe he earned that one. 

He ignored the kid as he pushed passed to start the coffee machine. Fuck being friendly before coffee. Anyone knew that.

Vali ignored him back. His knife was pushed into the seat beside him, but the kid was relaxed in his close surveillance. An empty box of gogosi from Clint’s stash explained why. So, he’d have to buy more next grocery run. He didn’t mind so much.

Two sips into the coffee, he finally groaned, then caught Vali’s eye. He deliberately plugged in the translator module before saying, “Szia. Please, come in. Make yourself at home.” 

The kid smirked at him, shifting a little to face him more. “He wants to meet with you, Tata Bak.” 

“Tata Bak?” Clint grinned at the name. “Daddy Buck. I like it.” 

The kid rolled his eyes but nodded. “You come with me?” 

Clint deliberately took another sip of coffee before asking, “Do I have time for pants?” 

“You wouldn’t be out of place.” Vali shrugged, still staring at him.

“Pants. And more coffee.” Clint turned and filled his cup again, deliberately putting his back to the kid. When he turned back around, there was a box of crackers in the kid’s hand. “Yeah. Don’t eat everything while I get dressed.” This time, he did ruffle the kid’s hair as he walked past him to get dressed.

#

Vali led him down to a local park. It was one he had marked as a possible source of informants, so it wasn’t surprising to know the Winter Soldier had picked it too. There was a lively free air market going, with steam vents sending billows of condensed heat up everywhere. Vali led him past that, to a tunnel on the far side. 

Inside, three more of the Soldier’s kids waited. Val immediately gave his box to the oldest one, grinning up at her. She merely snorted and turned to lead them. The other two fell in behind Clint, leaving Vali to walk beside him. 

The Soldier sat in a chamber that was obviously someone’s living space, but not his. Too many of the locals were side eying him. But no one fussed at the intrusion either. 

“If I give you this information, you will go away?” The Soldier’s eyes drilled into him, and Clint wondered exactly what he was supposed to call him.

“I will. I’ll blow the factory, follow the roaches, stomp on the ones I can. Doesn’t mean others won’t come.” Clint shrugged his wounded shoulder carefully. “Doesn’t mean you won’t see them coming.” He grinned down at Vali. 

The Soldier made a soft noise, then pointed at the kids behind him. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Clint yelled as a black bag dropped over his head. But they didn’t do all his dirty work. Strong hands clamped down on him, too strong to belong to anyone less than someone in their line of business. His own hands were pinned behind his back as he was driven forward. He protested at the strain it put on his healing shoulder, but it wasn’t enough to damage it.

He let them, since they didn’t search him or take his hearing aids again. Granted, his schtick was the bow and they knew he wouldn’t be using it anytime soon. This far underground, his aid modifications wouldn’t be able to send out any kind of signal either. 

Clint could smell the effluvia of people living crowded in spaces they weren’t meant to be in. Plus, the smell of musty water and electricity beneath that. People coughed and spoke around them, but no one stopped them. 

It took fifteen minutes to find their stopping point. They led him down into the bowels of the place, lower than most people were living. But it was in a circular path, so Clint was pretty sure they were still under the same park.  
But when the dirty sack came off his head, it was definitely in a war room. More kids were scattered around, updating maps and sharing bits of food from random places. Other kids were polishing a small arsenal of weapons, staring at him with distaste. “Okay, so this is very lair-ish. I like it.” 

The Soldier pushed past him, not saying anything, but Clint thought he saw the crook of a lip. “You need to hit it sooner. Tomorrow. They’re about to ship that stuff out.” 

Clint dropped all possible jokes and pushed forward to see the map the Soldier was tapping at. “Yeah, can’t let a single one of those into circulation. Any idea what they’re building?” 

“Chitauri neural links. To build a different type of soldier. Guns. Bombs.” One massive shoulder shrugged. “It’s Hydra.” 

“Yeah. Okay. So, I hit it tonight.” Clint was looking over the list of deliveries when a rigid finger pressed against the wound on the back of his shoulder again. He hissed, but spun to grab the back of the Soldier’s wrist. “Would you stop that?”

“You can’t hold a gun or a bow with that. How do you intend to do this?” The Solder didn’t pull away, just leaned in enough that Clint could see the fabled sea blue eyes clearly for the first time.

“Well, I usually just walk in through the front door.” Clint grinned and let go of the arm, absently realizing it was the bionic arm of fame. “Hey, what do you want me to call you, anyways? Tata Bak is just. No, sorry. Not using that one.” 

The Soldier blinked and stepped back, face pulled together in confusion. “Buck. The front door? That’s suicide.”

“Buck, OK.” Clint crossed his arms and turned to start looking at the mass of information again. There wasn’t any real organization to it, just lists on lists. Most of it was in the form of pictographs, and he wondered how many of the kids knew how to read and write. “The front door tactic is a time-honored tradition though.” 

“It’s suicidal.”

Clint shrugged, pausing to tap at the map again. “Not dead yet.” He traced a finger from the map over to the drawings of faces, tapping on each one he recognized. “Asshole, asshole, major butt wipe, asshole, royal asshole. Only one they’re really missing is Rumlow.” 

“He’s not dead?” 

Clint turned at the flat tone of the words, realizing that might be a problem for Buck. “Not for lack of trying to find him and finish the job, I promise you.” 

Buck looked away from him, checking on each kid. There were more than Clint realized, nearly ten. Vali seemed to be the youngest. But not by much. “Mind if I ask what the whole Oliver Twist vibe is around here?” 

Buck shot him a look, frowning a little. “I don’t know what that means.” Clint swallowed hard as the Soldier bore down on him, literally getting into his face. Close enough to feel the warmth of his breath. “Why is it just you here, not SHIELD or the…. Him... Them...” Buck pulled away, rubbing at his forehead.

“It’s just me because I’m on the run right now. I literally fell face first into your circus here. I don’t know who’s SHIELD or who’s Hydra until they pull a gun on me. The guy who shot me? I did eight missions with him and ended up under a pier in Manila with him once, ‘cause we drank so much we couldn’t remember where the safe house was.” Clint pointed at the faces in the lineup. “I didn’t even know those assholes were Hydra until I saw them here. There’s only four people I have ever trusted in the world and the best one’s dead. So yeah, it’s just me.” Clint took a deep breath, forcing the pain down again. “But trust me, I’m more than enough to blow up SHIELD all by myself. I’ve done it before. Twice, even.” 

Buck blinked at him, then stepped back. Clint took a deep breath, then rubbed at his shoulder as if it hurt. It did, but he pressed in a little more to help him focus. “Sorry. Let’s just... You’re cool here, I’m not interested in dropping anyone on your head. Just giving you a clear space.” 

“What about…” Buck paused, then pointed across at a different map, with several drawings of Steve Rogers. A couple of them were blurry, but the sharpest one looked like Steve after he stopped a train with his face. 

“Yeah, well, that’s between you and him. I trust him. He’s one of my four. But he didn’t ask me to do anything except keep an eye out. I figure if I bump into him again, I can at least tell him you’re safe.” Clint looked around the room. All the kids were staring at them. Each one had some sort of weapon in their hands, waiting for a signal. “I dunno if he’ll be happy with that, but it’s not my call to make. It’s yours.” 

Buck stared at him, then turned to stomp out of the war room, barking quick orders at the kids. Half of them followed, but Vali and a girl about twice his age came back to his side. Clint rubbed at his face, then faced his bodyguards. “So, what’s first?” 

Vali smirked and pointed back to the map. “He told us to help you and keep you away from him.”

“All right, fair enough.” Clint dug into his pockets to see how much cash he had, then held it up. “Who’s going on the pizza run?” 

#

Clint spent the afternoon with three of the kids. Vali, who seemed to have accepted him as okay and finally put the knife away, Cami, the girl who kept giving him the stink eye except when he wasn’t looking at her, and Nadezhda, the oldest one at 18. She seemed to act as the den mother and ordered all the other kids around. Clint assumed that made her the second in command under their Tata Bak.

He also learned that any direct questions not about the factory got ignored. He kept asking them, but only to distract when he came from something sideways. Both girls had their own story of how Tata Bak found them. Cami pointed out the corner where she’d worked as a lookout for a gang until Tata Bak backhanded the leader into a wall for hitting her. Nadezhda showed the scar from the man trying to kill her when Tata Bak pulled him off and threw him in the river to prove her resilience. Each of them had landmarks all over the city that told their story, even if they didn’t realize it. 

He was almost finished with his plan and thinking of how to spring for dinner when the atmosphere shifted. It made me think of Natasha, how she shifted from one phase to another. He looked up only seconds before Buck was pulling him along by the back of his hoodie towards the exit.

“What happened?” Clint didn’t struggle, just convinced his feet that they wanted to go that direction too. 

“There was a sweep. They picked up nearly two dozen people from the park. Only it wasn’t the police. It was Them.” Buck gave him a hard look.

Clint just nodded. “One of yours?” Buck nodded, lips pursed as he shoved Clint ahead of him into another room down the narrow tunnel. This one had weapons, their arsenal.

“We’re going now, whether you’re ready or not.” 

“I am. Do I have time to get my gear or not?” Clint asked.

Buck frowned at him. “You think you can shoot a bow already?” 

Clint grinned wide at him. “I’m not a one trick pony, Buck. My aim is as good as yours, with just about anything.” 

The Soldier gave him a narrow look. Normally Clint would be boasting to him like a mark, pulling tricks. He had a guess that those wouldn’t go over very well.

“Your place is on the way. What’s your plan?” Buck’s eyes flickered to the side. Clint wished he knew what was going on in there, but he’d wait.

“Flexible. I’ll tell you on the way.” Clint picked up a tiny sliver of a knife and tucked it out of sight down his shoulder blades. Just the spot to collect sweat and itch. 

#

The roof top now had two patrolling watchers with guns, so Clint’s front door idea was coming more and more likely. Until he saw the last bunch of confused street kids. Some had the glassy eyed look of the habitual huffers, but a couple still were trying to break free. 

Clint elbowed Buck carefully, then unzipped his hoodie. “Trade me, mine’s too clean.” He shrugged out of it without commenting, then handed it to Vali to hold while he rubbed dirt off the nearby brick wall to rub into his hair and blur the lines of his face. Then he took Buck’s black hoodie and pulled it on. It was too big, but he figured that would help hide his bulk. The scent of Buck wrapped around him threatened to take him down paths he couldn’t think of right now, so he pushed it away. “Okay, which one’s your kid?” 

Buck pointed out a black haired young man, face still round with traces of baby fat despite the street grime. “Mihai.” Clint nodded, then dipped down to Vali and Cami. “Okay, you two, go distract the guards. Don’t get caught, just distract.” 

Clint took off down the alleyway to come up behind the coffle of prisoners tied together. He trusted Buck to keep the other kids safe, but from there he was on his own. No time to warn Natasha or Steve if this went bad. 

And to be honest, didn’t they always go bad one way or another? 

A patter of rocks hit the group in front of him. He heard the swearing of the guards and the quick steps of their boots in chase. He took that as his cue and slipped into the group of prisoners, wiggling through until he was pressed up against Mihai’s back. “Hey kid. Tata Bak sent me. You get out of here, okay?” A quick twist of the fingers and the kid’s wrists were free. Clint shoved his hands in their place and elbowed the kid back into the shadows. A couple of the men up front started to shuffle and demand to go free too.

“Hey! Shut up! Maradj csöndben!” Clint winced away from the smacks and thrusts of gun butts as the guards returned. “Fucking kids,” one said in a clear American accent. Clint didn’t even try to look up to see who it was. 

They took too much pleasure shoving and pushing their prisoners into the building. There were maybe two dozen inside pushing brooms or carrying boxes to trucks. Almost all of those were wearing some sort of shackle to keep them at work. 

Clint risked a glance upwards. The open-air shipping dock turned into a floor wide factory. Lots of rigging in the top but too well-lit to hide and run in. Clint couldn’t tell exactly what they were making, but he recognized gun presses when he saw them. And the queer blue light from the Chitauri neural links was enough to make him duck away again. He’d never get used to that. The heady scent of male sweat, and musk rose up from his borrowed hoodie, giving him something to focus on.

“This the last lot?” someone asked, pen clacking against a clip board.

“Yeah. They saw us doing a sweep and ran like the rats they are. We’re gonna have to start hunting somewhere else soon.” 

“Actually, this is probably all we need.” There was more but it was squelched by the hiss of his hearing aids. Someone was scanning for electronics. 

Clint ducked his head to pull them out quickly and shoved them deep into the hoodie’s pockets, then adopted the dumb look that served him so well. 

The coffle was being broken up, the people in front of him being shoved to go left or right down assembly frames. When they got to him, he blinked and pulled back, shaking his head. The yelling was easy to lip read. -Can you work? Can you read? What’s wrong with you?-

He shook his head again and cowered more, then tapped at his ears again. “Süket vagyok!” he slurred at them.

-Why bother controlling that one? he’d never hear the commands.- The man with the clip board pointed to the left. Which, yay. One round of mind control per lifetime was one too many anyways. 

Someone pushed him forward and he stumbled, pulling the lockpicks out of his wrist pocket. He looked around again, miming fear, then stumbled harder when they kept pushing.

 

In front of him were men being locked into places on the assembly lines. More Chitauri blue pieces, enough to make him think that maybe Tony’s storage got looted by HydraSHIELD at some point. He’d have to report this one to Maria. If she was still part of the chain of command. She’d been with Steve and Natasha at the end. Maybe she could be trusted with this.

His handler kept shoving him, pointing him to a spot and locking his shackle to it. Then he smacked the kid in front of Clint, and pointed to his hands, then smacked Clint. -You! Do that. Do what he does! Maybe you’ll get fed.- 

The kid’s fingertips were scratched and bloody. He was maybe twenty and just as skinny as most of the street rats he’d met so far on this trip. The thin hands shook as he did his assigned task, plugging one section of the neural link into what Clint guessed was a spinal injection unit. Clint nodded, then winked. His own fingertips danced across the shackles until they clicked open and he could dig his hearing aids back out. 

The kid was staring at him as he slid the aids back into place, so he shot a small smile at him. “Don’t worry kid, we’re getting outta this.” He pointed down at the assembly line, then nimbly put together several so he could keep the line going while he scoped the place out.

“My dearest Snowstorm, did you hear that almighty squelch?” he murmured, turning his mouth into his shoulder to block the sound. 

“Jesus, Oscar, what the fuck did you get yourself into?” Her voice was harsh, with the tiniest thread of Russian thickness. Uh oh.

“Now don’t be mad, honey, I just met up with a few old friends.” He tossed a connection across the board, looking around. “Someone got into Scrooge’s vault, too.” 

“Yeah, that’s come to our attention. What does that mean for you?” 

“Oh, just that I’m gonna test Cruella’s implosion toy?” Clint looked around, counting the guards. Four on the overheads, another four wandering around, two inspecting the finished thing at the end of the assembly lines. “Would you mind doing an overhead on my ping?” 

“Yeah, already did. Big concentration of people in your building, empty all around. I need a status check, Bert.”

“Hydra factory. Using street people in forced labor to create something out of Chitauri bits. I’m blowing it tonight.” 

“No. You need to wait. I can have Skylark there in four hours!”

“Abort!” Clint hissed, but he wanted to scream. He did the next best thing and rested his forehead on the bar in front of him. “Skylark is a hard no. I’ll…. Fill him in after.”

Silence from her side. “Ernie, how serious is this?”

“Well, not quite a Hurricane? I’m just trying to keep Grumpy Bear in the quartet, okay?” They’d never come up for a code name for the Soldier. No, his name was Buck. C’mon Clint! Remember that.

“I’ll be there in six hours. I have something I’m following up on first. Don’t get dead.” There was a hard click, and Clint sighed.

“That’s always the plan, why doesn’t she remember that?” 

#

Clint slowed down, then started swaying side to side as one of the guards came to check on him. They’d been at this for over an hour already. Someone had started screaming on one of the lines behind him. Clint swayed more, then leaned against the side, protecting his ribs as the guard tried to jam the cattle prod into them. The other guards were looking away as he hissed and whined at the electric jolt, dancing away from it before chopping out with the neural connection, stamping it into the middle of the guard’s throat. A second twist to jerk him down enough to bring his knee up into the guy’s stomach and the fight was over. 

Clint stripped the guard of his hat and jacket before pushing him under his station. He straightened up and pulled on the disguise over his clothes. It felt traitorous to leave Buck’s hoodie behind, so he kept it on. He’d explore the thoughts it gave him later. Much… Later.

The people chained to the assembly line gave him terrified looks, but no one spoke up as he walked the rest of the way down the line. Clint only had the cattle prod and his three knives for weapons on him, but he was in a room with a lot of sharp pointy things. 

He got to the end of the line and waited for the inspection thug to look up. It was satisfying to put a fist in their face. It was a familiar one.

One of the other thugs went down without a word across the room, so he took the fourth one and their gun to drop the guards up on the railings as fast as he could.

Most of the prisoners had ducked down under their work benches. All he saw were clenched hands in the air in their shackles. Fuck. This. 

The third person he had dropped had the keys. And under the table where the fourth had dropped, Vali was grinning, a bloody knife in his hand.

“You weren’t supposed to come in!” Clint hissed, moving to start unlocking shackles. 

Vali ignored that and wiggled forward to the next line of prisoners. “Tata Bak said to keep an eye on you.” He must have found keys on the guard he dropped, because he was unlocking shackles too quick to be using lock picks. 

“Yeah, as surveillance.” Clint stressed the word hard, but knew it wouldn’t make a difference. “Look, it’s gonna get messy in here. You need...” Then Clint ducked as one of the neural links went past his head. 

“No. This is what I need. My dad died here. This is mine too!” Vali yelled, his words almost too thick for the translation module. “This is my kill!”

Clint swallowed, going still. Just how many more kids would Hydra end up chewing up and spitting out? At least this one bit back, and Clint could respect that.

“Okay, so you stick with me, all right? I’m going to make this factory look like a hole in the ground by morning, but we gotta get everyone out first.” Clint waited until Vali nodded, then turned back to free more people from the line. When he got to the end, he gave the keys to the most sensible looking one and pointed him at the last line, so that he could get a look at the parts supply end of the assembly. 

Just as he had suspected and told Natasha, the boxes were stamped with the logo of Damage Control. A couple had labels from the Sandbox too. Clint started cursing as he rolled up his hoodie and shirt to peel off the sensors from his tac jacket underneath. Tony had made them, but he didn’t know that Clint had lifted a supply from him. He’d know momentarily when they started their upload. 

Once he was done, the prisoners were all milling around the guards. Some had picked up guns and a couple were kicking the bodies. At least they still had some wits about them. Others had broken into boxes that held MRE type things, from the amount going into mouths. He wasn’t going to argue about that either.

Clint took another tour around the room, slapping sensors on things he thought Tony should know about, before hopping up on the table to make the other prisoners look at him. “Okay, listen up. Grab what you can and follow me. Stick together! Once we’re out of the building, run like fuck.” Vali repeated his words in Romanian as they both headed for the door. 

Clint paused, then looked down at his half-sized partner. “Listen, I need you to lead. I’ll be in the back, to make sure no one tries to break away from the group or gets left behind, okay?” Clint waited until he nodded, then bent down and gave him half the payload, a series of six tiny boxes. “Then we’re going to put these on the outside walls, just I did over there.” Clint pointed at the walls where the two blinks of light responded. “Stay out of sight, put yours up, then get out too. I’ll let you push the button once the building’s clear. Promise.” 

If there was still a SHIELD, he would have taken the kid with him. If Coulson was still in recruitment, he’d have a place to send this one. Because the look on Vali’s face, the glee at the promised destruction, it was like looking through a wormhole into the past. 

That should scare him. But Clint always felt invincible when someone looked at him like that. He missed the flaming red hair of the usual half of his destructo act, but this will do.

“First, where’s the best door to get them out?” Vali pointed left and Clint nudged him. “Lead the way.” A murmured set of instructions to his ear piece, and it started translating for him, pushing the group of prisoners ahead of him.

#

The other half of the building did pose a problem. Vali, and by extension Buck, didn’t have any information on it other than the fact that no one ever came out alive. 

It was also complicated by the panicking Hydra assholes who didn’t like the fact that their factory workers had disappeared into thin air. That made Clint grin wide. Except when they got in the way. 

Somewhere Vali had picked up a gun, but it was one of the non-lethal, sleepy time guns that the nerds in SHIELD had been developing. Clint let him keep it, only directing a little. “Buck teach you guys to shoot?” 

“Some. No bullets.” Val started to say something else, but his face went white, staring at something over Clint’s shoulder.

Clint spun around and threw out six darts in quick succession. It didn’t even phase the guy behind him. Orange patches glowed through the Chitauri neural links from before. “Oh hi. Uhm... You’re a good guy, right? You’ll let us go?” Clint didn’t wait for an answer, but just charged in, his good shoulder aimed for the guy’s gut. 

Natasha swore Clint had a hidden super power, but he knew it was just a gift of deduction honed by all the years watching the grifters fleece marks on the carnie circuit. He could see three possible ways out of this mess, and he could follow the logical chain of reactions in a half a heartbeat. But only one option kept Vali safe. So really, no choice.

It meant kicking the kid behind a pallet at an angle that allowed this souped up Chitauri enhanced asshole to punch into his shoulder wound.

It meant a second person coming in with one of those nasty cattle prods to light up his midsection. 

It meant a half second after Clint hit the floor, where he could roll the implosion device to Vali. He kept his eyes on the kid the whole time they drug him down the hall. Then he gave into the pain and blacked out. 

#

Something pinged off his forehead. “C’mon you cockroach, don’t give them the satisfaction of finally putting Hawkeye down. Not yet.” 

Oh. Clint blinked at the peeling paint on the ceiling above him. He was tied down, spread eagle, and he knew that voice. 

“There you are. Thanks for the validation, by the way. They didn’t believe me that you weren’t dead.” Another ping off his forehead. Stephenson and his stupid peanuts.

“Yeah well, sorry to make you happy, asshole.” Clint shook his head, then lifted up as much as he could to take stock. Stephenson sat on a bench nearby, the bag of peanuts in his hand.

“Mmm. Hang on a minute. It gets better. You got rid of most of our test subjects, so you get to take their place.” Stephenson grinned. The asshole was swinging his feet his feet in pleasure. 

“Huh. Maybe.” Clint felt free to look around. He was definitely in the unknown part of the building. There were other stretchers, some occupied. Most weren’t. 

“This scientist, he’s been working with the Chitauri gear since they first got here. Thanks for that too.” 

“You really are a jackass, aren’t you? Kinda wish I’d put an arrow through your eye that day.” Clint dropped his head back to think. “Were you always an asshole or did Hydra do the job for you?” 

“Keep laughing, but you’ve always done good work for us, even if you didn’t know it.” A pause, Stephenson going for the agony of making Clint listen to him swallow a drink. Clint rolled his tongue against his teeth, trying to get his saliva going again. “I imagine, once we get you outfitted, you’ll make an even better Asset than Zola’s old toy.” 

Clint raised his head to glare at him, hiding the shiver of fear that crawled along his spine. “Not sure that’ll work out the way you expect it to.” 

Another peanut pinged off his forehead. Clint let it, turning his ears to the areas he couldn’t see. Stephenson just laughed. “Oh, we have our ways. I’m betting Loki opened the door for us. And once we got you ready, the first place you’re going to go to work is right back into those tunnels and clear out those damn rats. I’m gonna love watching this.” 

Hands came into view now, pressing a needle into the side of his neck. Stephenson was laughing. Then those same hands removed his hearing aids. Something else covered his eyes, plunging him back into the dark with the echo of that asshole’s laugh. Clint chose to focus on the look Vali gave him in the hall. Buck would know what to do.

Clint just hoped that there was enough of a person still in there to make the right decision. 

#

 

Lights came back up, bright. Clint blinked as tears flooded his eyes, snuffling a little before blinking again, but he forced a laugh out anyways. That always irritated them. He tensed, waiting for the needles, but kept laughing. 

More needle pricks in his arm. They’d stayed away from using his bad shoulder as the pin cushion, so now they both were sore. He tried to ready his stomach for the psychotropics, but that never really helped, to be honest. 

A hand waved in front of his face and he tried to focus on it. This was someone new. Red fingernails flashed as the fingers they adorned snapped under his nose. A second hand joined them and did something completely unexpected. They spelled something.

Clint didn’t catch it the first time, but the second time he realized they said -Focus, idiot!-

He couldn’t help but giggle. These new drugs were the best! He was hallucinating Tasha now. 

One of those wicked hands snapped out and slapped him hard, leaving his cheek stinging. Clint welcomed the pain, blinking through a fresh set of tears to focus. 

Natasha’s face swam into view. “Tasha? Real you or fake you.” 

She spoke slow so he could read her lips through the pain and the drugs. “Well, Snuffleupagus, I’m getting really tired of fishing you out of these situations.” 

“Me too. Me too. OW!” Feeling shot through his arm as it came alive, followed by pain of muscle cramps. Tasha was fighting with the second clamp. That arm burned as well, and he brought them both in to his chest to cradle against his chest. “Worst part.” 

Natasha tapped on his shoulder, then down at his feet. He nodded. Maybe he couldn’t walk, but having his feet free helped his mental stability. “I don’t know what they did with my ears.” 

Tasha came back into view, shrugging, then she dug into her pockets to pull out another set. Clint grinned and let her put them in for him while he still worked at his arms. “Good thing I know to carry spares. Idiot. What the hell happened?” 

“Hydra. Using street people as forced labor and human lab rats.” Clint turned his face to the bench, then looked beyond. The other stretchers were gone. “Fuck, they moved them. Using Chitauri neural links as a basis for implantation and I don’t know what.”

“Here.” Natasha held up a bottle to his lips, and he drank gratefully. “How bad are you?” 

“Shot, in the shoulder,” he replied, then went down the list of what he could remember. “Sore fucking everywhere. I was in and out, so I don’t know if they implanted anything.” 

“We’ll check later, right now, we gotta blow this place and bug out.” Natasha was handing him a jacket now. It wasn’t the hoodie he’d worn when he came in. 

“Aw no, hoodie. I wanted to keep you.” Oh, that was out loud. He pulled the jacket on without saying anything else, but Natasha was smirking.

“This has sentimental value to you?” Buck’s black hoodie was in her hand as she lifted it up. It was shredded and bloodstained. Clint winced, then shook his head.

“Not anymore. What else did they leave?” 

“Not much. But I brought you this.” Tasha had a bow. She put a bow in his hands. A recurve he knew instinctively, and he almost hugged it. Well, he held it tight to his chest and let it guide him out of the remaining haze. “Uh-huh. I brought your pacifier. Can we go now?” 

The floor shook under their feet. Clint stood up and blinked. “I don’t think they’re gonna wait for us.” 

“Who’s blowing it up?” Nat helped him off the table, patiently waiting through the drag of his body when his knees crumpled and gave him time to figure out how to stand.

“Uh. Sorta me? See there’s this group of street kids…” Clint paused, not sure how much to tell her. Did she know about Buck yet?

Another explosion rocked the ground, and this time it wasn’t his traitorous knees that drug them down. “Talk later, move now,” Nat ordered, then put motion to words. 

Clint let her lead, secure in she knew what she was doing. There were a few Hydra people still around, but sadly, Stephenson wasn’t one that went down with a Widow’s Bite to the throat. And he called Clint the cockroach. Clint was gonna invent new curse words for that asswipe’s ability to disappear. 

That’s what he was concentrating when Tasha came to a complete stop and caused him to run into her back. “Tash.. What?” 

“Go back. Go back now!” She was twisting in front of him to slide past him, tugging at him to follow.

The door was open, to freedom. Except it was blocked by one person.

Buck scowled at Clint. The stare was steadier than any that Clint had seen before on his face. That was a good thing, right? He turned to tug back at Tasha’s hand, trying to pull her to a stop. “No Tasha, he’s friendly now, wait!”

A puff of air along his cheek and he turned back to see Buck with a gun. It wasn’t an icer. Buck shot again, two times. The concussion of the shots made the hearing aids squeal. He couldn’t stop but turn to look behind him.

Natasha stared forward, blinking a little in shock. Clint couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen that look on her face. But she wasn’t bleeding, and she was still standing.

Behind her, Stephenson was looking down at the hole in his chest, leaking blood all down his stomach and legs. A second hole had opened up in his shoulder but it wasn’t as big as the one in the middle. “Look at that, you slimy underbelly of a snake. I have better backup!” 

Tasha rolled her eyes, but it broke her stasis. She pushed him forward, towards the soft snort behind him. 

Clint turned to look at Buck. He was still staring, but the corners of his eyes were crinkled up. “You took too long.” 

“I got distracted. Vali plant the devices I gave him?” Clint shrugged, dropping the bow to his side. He didn’t even have arrows, but it still felt good to hold. 

“He did. They moved some of stuff, though.” Buck moved to the side so Clint and Natasha could exit. She was still giving the ex-Soldier a wide berth but at least she was holding back violent reactions. 

“How long was I in there?” Clint blinked at the sunlight, looking up in confusion. 

“About twelve hours. Vali came for me as soon as he got out.” 

Clint groaned, rubbing the back of his neck. “God, I need some fucking coffee.” He turned to Natasha, winking, then the three of them turned back to the building. “But I’d rather see that go first.” 

Buck snorted, then looked up at the roof. Clint looked up and squinted. To his eternal surprise, a hand came around his shoulder to lightly caress his throat, thumb pushing his jaw up to look at the right angle. The touch was soft, but still comforting. He saw Vali on the edge of the roof across the street and nodded, but he didn’t pull away. He’d blame it on the exhaustion later, sure. 

Natasha hummed softly in amusement, and he turned to glare at her. “I think it’s time,” he murmured, trusting Buck to understand.

The large warm hand left his neck, and Clint looked up just in time to see Vali wave. 

Tony had tried to explain the effect of his implosion technique, but Clint preferred his own understanding. Sound was sucked in first, then the whole world wobbled. Natasha had her hands over her ears, but Clint just clicked his aids off. 

The smell of ionized rubber rose up, then everything shimmered right before the building crumpled in on itself. If it worked correctly, only the exterior bricks remained. Everything else was vaporized into a possibly radioactive pebble.

The theory played out as even the cornerstones crumbled inward while the roof fell with no support beneath it. Dirt and dead leaves littering the street blew out and plastered against their legs, even 30 feet away. 

Clint waited until Natasha exhaled before clicking his aids back on. “That was cool.” 

“Does Ursula know you have that?” Natasha turned a knowing eye on him.

“Now he does. We need to go. You still clean?” 

“Yeah. I’ll handle this.” Natasha just poked him in the shoulder, ignoring his whine of protest. “And what do I tell Evergreen?” 

Clint glanced at Buck. His face was blank, but he had no doubt that Buck was soaking it all in. “Tell him I’ve made contact and that I’m going underground, given the Hydra activity in the area. 

“That only works if you give up pizza,” Natasha said with a smile. 

“Why do you think I’m going with the guy who has his own spy network of street kids? Delivery fees are cheap!” 

Natasha just laughed, then turned to the sound of sirens. “Go. I’ve got this.” 

Buck made another hand signal. Clint grinned at the obedience of the kids before yelping in surprise as he found himself draped over a hard shoulder. The remaining blood in his body rushed to his face, making him nauseous and dizzy, so he didn’t fight it. 

Natasha, the traitor, was filming the whole thing, so he flipped her off before they went around a corner and he lost sight of her.


	2. The Catch

No one really gave them a second look, down in the alleys. Clint wasn’t really sure, since he was more than a little woozy. Maybe the kids were clearing the way. He certainly wasn’t being allowed to make any decisions. “I could walk, you know.”

Buck grunted and shifted, tightening his arm around Clint’s waist.

“No, seriously. I’m not little Steve from back in the day. I can take a good beating.” A metal finger slipped into the middle of the bruises on his ribs and pressed down for that one, making him yelp. 

“Okay fine, fine. I’ll shut up and take my lecture, if you just put me on my feet.” They turned another corner, then started down a drainage ditch. From his viewpoint, he could see the culvert he’d woken up in that first time after meeting Buck. Even if he hadn’t quite known it at the time. 

“Oh, I see, you’re gonna bury the remains, I take it?” That earned him another snort, then he found himself being dropped into a plastic bin. “Aw, not the trash again!”

Buck bent down and looked him in the eyes, shaking his head a little. “Do you ever shut up?”

“Tasha says I talk in my sleep.” Clint shrugged, then grinned. 

“That I can believe.” Buck put his foot on the bin, right between Clint’s legs and pushed.

The bin tipped back and then he was sliding into darkness. He heard laughter as he cursed about that. The bin wobbled dangerously when he tried to turn around to see where he was going. There was already a decent crack in the side that widened with each lurch. Clint froze, then turned his head slowly. 

The tunnel had a downward grade, flashing past a few levels. A couple kids ran alongside, so he wasn’t sliding as fast as it felt like. That could have been the blood loss, he thought. 

A hand reached out to grab the back of the bin, slowing him down as the floor started to level out. Clint looked up and thought he recognized the black hair, but hey, it’d been a rough 24 hours. He smiled slowly, then started to stand up when they didn’t crash into anything.

A silver hand reached over the kid and pushed. Clint toppled back into the bin with a groan, and counted himself as wise as he didn’t argue with Buck about this. The gleaming hand held the bin between his knees, dragging them along in his wake. That was smart, Clint decided. The ceiling was way too low and he didn’t want to add a second concussion on top of the one he was still healing from. 

Time started to get a little loopy. At some point, he went from his plastic chariot to something soft he could stretch out on. He could smell Buck’s scent when the former assassin leaned in to assess injuries. Someone shoved a protein bar into his hand and forced him to eat it. That same voice demanded he drink the cup he was given. Every time he whined that it was gross, it was tipped back into his mouth until he got the hint. 

Then he took a stroll with his old friend, Darkness. 

#

Voices were soft as Clint came back from his visit in the void. He stayed limp and kept his eyes closed, assessing his surroundings. His ego said that was training, but honesty gave the win to his overall condition of being shot and beaten up, yet again.

He could smell a small fire somewhere. Something that smelled edible was being cooked. Kids played in an area close by, yelling and laughing about something. Closer to him, he could hear the scratch of a pen on paper, and the mumble of Russian words. That was the closest voice. 

Clint’s mind rebelled at replaying the last thing he remembered, other than Natasha’s amused smile and a hard lump of metal against his belly. So he let his eyes open and turned his head slowly towards the sound of the muttering. 

They were in some sort of cement alcove. Drawings were pasted to every bit of wall and ceiling, sometimes overlapping. The floor was covered in blankets and pillows in all sorts of shapes and materials. They looked soft, every bit as soft as the stuff he was laying on. 

Buck had a plank on top of cinder blocks to make a desk, and he was sitting hunched over it as he wrote into a journal. Clint had to admit to a little bit of jealousy. His former SHIELD therapist had wanted him to keep a journal. All he’d ever done was draw arrows, triangulate shots, and make dick jokes in it. But it seemed to be working for Buck. 

It was also warm down here. From the smell it, Clint was guessing an exhaust vent somewhere. But it was warm enough that Buck was down to one shirt, and he could see more of the metal arm. His eyes caught on the machining of the plates, the very elegance of how they fit together and moved. He itched to trace the plates and explore hows of it all, but even in his woozy state, he knew better than that. 

Something caught his eye, and he had to smile up into Buck’s amused smile. “Hi.” 

“Szia. You lived.” 

“Yeah, I tend to do that. Comes in handy. Not gonna move for a while, okay?”

“Probably best. Hungry?” 

Clint thought about that and blinked slowly. The blink became longer, then when he opened his eyes again, Buck was changing bandages on his shoulder and ribs. “Huh.”

“Hello again. You get shot a lot.” The metal fingers were so soft, it was almost ticklish. They were tracing older scars across Clint’s torso. One of those scars had a history connected to the hand touching it. Clint shied away from that. Instead, he wondered if he was wearing pants.

“And knifed, and punched. Lots of things get thrown at me too. Comes with the job.” Clint tried to shrug with his left shoulder, then groaned when the muscles protested.

“I see that.” Buck fell silent, still marking each spot, but those dark eyes moved to Clint’s face more often. “If She had not arrived, how would you have gotten out of there?” 

Wow, he managed to capitalize words like Tasha did. Clint wanted to shrug, but he knew better. He also felt like blushing, and thought maybe he could explain it away from the heat down here. “I was working on that.” 

“You were going to let us blow the building with you in it.” There was no heat to the words, but somehow, they packed all the weight of Steve’s “I’m disappointed in you” look. 

“It had to come down?” No fair, he was just as bad as Natasha, interrogating him when he didn’t have the brain power to put the argument together right. “I expected you to, if all else failed.” 

Buck froze, and although he didn’t move, it felt like time paused just enough to let space shift in between them. “Hey, you didn’t know me, still don’t. And you have all your kids to take care of. And there are worse ways to go out, trust me.” Loki’s mocking laugh echoed in the back of his head. Clint didn’t acknowledge it. 

“You took Mihai’s place. Now, you are one of mine too.” Time started again as Buck leaned in, a couple locks of his hair brushing against Clint’s cheek. “Don’t forget that.” 

Clint swallowed hard, then meekly replied, “Yes sir.” 

Buck stared at him, inches away. His body odor was strong when he came this close, but Clint didn’t mind it at all. He rather thought all his injuries were keeping him from making a fatal mistake. Some assassins just don’t take to kissing. 

Something made Buck satisfied and he pulled away, moving out of the alcove. “Hey!” Clint yelled. “I got a question.” 

“What,” Buck muttered, pausing to look back.

“Am I wearing pants?” 

Laughter echoed down the tunnel, covering Buck’s footsteps as he walked away. Clint lifted his head up just enough to look down his torso at his bare legs. Mercifully, he had boxers on. “Oh. Oh man.” 

#

The next time Clint woke up, he was covered up, at least. And he could sit up without his head swishing around. 

He wasn’t alone, but it wasn’t Buck watching over him this time. Instead he had Vali, and the black-haired kid from earlier. The kid was bumbling and shy, but thankful for being fished out of the mess. Between the two of them, they’d raided his squat and brought everything to him. A proper shirt and some sweatpants to cover up his scars made him feel a lot better. And Vali had brought him a box of gogosi. 

None of his equipment worked down here, of course. Too much interference with the metal pipes and cement. And he was at least three stories down under Soviet era construction. At least they built for the long term. 

Clint also gave up the idea of searching through his gear to see what was missing or had been messed with. No point. If the kids hadn’t gone through it when they picked it up, he was sure Buck would have checked it over too. Counted on it. He would have done the same. 

Instead, he spent the next two days getting to know the urchin gang while Buck was in and out, following up on where they may have moved the factory. Once he was mobile, he got to add his two cents in on the research. Because that’s what it was. Tata Bak ran a tight team and had taught his kids how to handle surveillance. Bits of his gear were already in use, but Clint didn’t mind. They were ultimately working for him. 

Buck hadn’t said anything about it, but he never saw a weapon on him. Clint was good with that. This was something he needed to do. Probably not the best way to work out his trust issues, but it still needed doing.

No one said anything when he took a seat in the middle of the War Room. It wasn’t the same one he saw the first time, but better equipped. Someone had wired it for cable and at least two kids were watching TV at any given time in the corner. Clint liked that, because it gave him a chance to work on his Romanian without actually speaking. 

Mihai was very nearly a literal shadow. It was obvious that Buck had told him to do anything Clint needed. Including leading him out from the tunnels to see where Buck thought maybe the new installation was. 

The air was crisper than he had expected. Fall had arrived with a bite and it made breathing interesting for a moment. But that was a feeling Clint knew intimately. It just meant he was still alive. The static coming to life in his ears and the sunshine on his face made it worth it though. 

“Oh Sunshine, I’ve missed you.” He turned his face up to the warmth, waiting for the reply in his comms.

“And here I thought you were turning into the Count, finally.” Natasha’s voice was warm, and the signal was very clear. She was still in the city. 

Clint smiled at the kid next to him, then tapped at his aid before putting his finger to his lips for silence. “I vant to count your blood!” Clint joked, then started walking down the alleyway leading from their tunnel exit. 

“Ow. Status report, you dweeb.” 

“Walking, alive. Monitored 24/7 by the Romanian Power Rangers. Healing. Your turn.” 

“Busy. This city is crawling with cockroaches. Haven’t found the source yet.” 

Clint followed Mihai into a more crowded street, keeping his head ducked down. “We’re looking at pest control too. Ping me.” 

 

“Please, Ernie. I’ve been pinging for you every ten minutes.” A pause, and Clint started wondering how to manage a fresh influx of cash when Tasha continued. “This wasn’t a wrinkle I expected to find, you know.”

“Trust me, Brightness. Ever since the Potomac became a parking lot, I keep expecting the worst.” Mihai guided him down another alley, but Clint pulled him to a stop, then pointed at an ATM. “By the way, say goodbye to the rent money.” 

“You’re topped off and ready. I’ve been watching THAT too.” A sound in the background, and a fragment of conversation came back to him.

“Has, ah, Pinafore decided to join this caper?” Clint dug a blank credit card with a skimmer out of his bag, moving the kid around in front of him while he slipped the skimmer into place and started to code the machine.

“I had to tell him, Bert. We both needed a bit of hope.” 

Clint swallowed hard, handing Mihai a wad of bills from the first withdrawal, then pulled the max amount two more times. “Yeah, I get that. My goal is to get both of us out of this intact, you know.”

“Both of you?” Oh, she knew how to work him. That tone was just the right shade of sarcastic to show she wanted that.

“Yeah, ‘cause turns out, Tenderheart knows what he’s doing. Just what I needed, right?” A goal, a reason to watch his six. A voice of reason, which as much as he loved Tasha, she never had been able to give him that. Phil had been that voice for both of them.

“Huh.” Tasha took a deep breath, then continued, “Come topside more often. And keep your street clean.” 

“Aye aye, Rainbow.” Clint touched his ear wig again to log out before uninstalling the skimmer, then smiled at Mihai. “Let’s go?” 

#

This time it wasn’t a rooftop he found them on, but a water tower on the edge of the town. Clint’s legs were aching already, and the climb up was just murder. Thankfully Buck and Vali were sitting down at the top, so Clint dropped down with a huff. 

Buck gave him long enough to catch his breath before handing (his own) binoculars over and pointing. “Three points southwest from true north.” 

Clint mentally counted the points latitude to find the building Buck meant. It was across the low dip of a valley from them, about a mile by air. “Huh. Not what I expected.” It was an American style shopping block, anchored by a coffee place at one end and a travel agency at the other. 

“It’s not the distribution point. But,” Buck paused, fumbling into his pocket to pull out a drawing. It took a bit of focus not to flinch at the image of yet another old teammate. “This one seems to own it? He’s always there.” 

“Yeah.. Is there a red-light district nearby? He always loved gambling and girls.” Clint took the time to scope out what he could of the area.

“You knew him too?” Buck’s voice was soft, but Clint decided there was more Brooklyn in the accent at the moment. 

“Yeah. Strike Team Echo. We cross purposed with them a few times.” Clint passed the binoculars back, then shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to think. “Mostly European ops, if I remember right. He was good at intel…” And just like that, Clint had the memory of drawing a bead on the back of the guy’s head when he ran his mouth about Tasha on her first op with SHIELD. “Asshole’s name is Marchand. Doesn’t surprise me one bit that he’s with Hydra.” 

“Do you have a plan, if we find the spot?” Buck was looking at him calmly, but Clint had a feeling of being pinned. Just as he had been when he’d first woken up in Buck’s lair.

“Yup. Well, working on one. Tasha’s still in the area. She’s got resources to interrogate the survivors and dispose of their torture devices properly this time.” At least, Clint assumed she did, if Stark wasn’t bombing the area in response to Clint’s unauthorized use of his implosion toys. “When I got in the first time, I slapped a few tracking sensors on everything I could. They should’ve been screaming their heads off to daddy this whole time.” 

Buck blinked, then looked back at the target. “Who is ‘Daddy?’”

Clint couldn’t help the smirk that crept onto his face. “Tony Stark.” He immediately regretted it when Buck shuddered and grabbed at his head. Vali was quick to grab the binoculars. To Clint’s surprise, the kid then threw a blanket over Buck’s shoulders before shooting a glare at Clint. 

“Oh... Well crap.” Clint bit his lip, then looked across the valley, tracking traffic and mentally mapping possible routes in and out. He also shuffled just a bit over to let Buck lean into him, if he wanted. He should have known Stark would be a trigger word. Phil Coulson could’ve told him how much Barnes would’ve known Stark Sr. back during the war, but Clint had no clue. But Stark had been a part of Project Rebirth, so… Clint reminded himself to start thinking before speaking again.

Clint had to grab at the wood beneath him when he realized that, thanks to elapsed time vs cryo time, it was very possible that Tony was older than Buck in lived time. But Buck, or rather the assholes who had controlled the Winter Soldier, might have been the ones who made Tony an orphan, if Tasha’s read of the intel was right. This crap was worse than time travel. 

He dug into the bag he’d brought, pulling out a light weight rig he’d packed. His left shoulder was still sore from the bullet wound, but this bow preferred a right draw. It wasn’t actually a work bow, but even more specialized than that. He took a moment to carefully pick the payload arrow, checked to make sure the power supply was still good, then stood up to windmill his right arm and work his shoulder loose.

Buck was watching when he took aim. Two deep breaths, then on the exhale, he took the shot. Higher than usual, because he wanted the roof. He waited three heartbeats, then keyed the dispersal. Even from this distance, he could see the sensors break from the arrowhead to scatter across the roof and windows of the building before the ripple of the camouflage tech made them disappear. 

Clint sat down and smiled softly at Buck and Vali. “Sensor arrow. It’s limited, especially at distance, but it’ll give us an idea how active the building is, maybe heat signatures, maybe some audio. Mostly, I just painted a big fat target for Tasha to tag from space. We still have a satellite or two on our side.” 

Buck’s eyes were wide, and they still looked a little panicked, but Clint thought maybe there was a touch of respect in there. “Look, these assholes don’t play nice. We need to use every advantage we’ve got, right?” 

Buck tilted his head a little to the side. “We?” 

“Well, someone seems to have laid claim to my services past few days. You take me, you get a full-service spy.” Clint gave him a soft little smile, remembering those eyes boring into him again. No amount of morphine or concussion drowsiness would wipe that out, it seemed.

“Huh.” Buck fell silent for a minute. Clint spent that moment looking at anything but Buck. Checking sight lines, he told himself, then packed the little bow away. Buck picked up the binoculars, watching the building again. 

A soft sigh came out of him, making both Clint and Vali look up. There was a crease between his eyebrows that smelled like trouble to Clint. Buck barked something quick at Vali that made him hop to his feet and slither down to the ground where Mihai was keeping watch. 

“Why do I feel like I just got sent to the principal’s office again?” Clint asked, loosening his shoulders a little to get ready to roll with whatever happened next.

Buck laughed, then handed the binoculars over. “Why is your little Russian friend staking out our stake out?” 

Clint blinked and looked again. Natasha was sitting outside the coffee shop, wearing a plush fur coat and sunglasses that Clint would associate more with one of Stark’s crowd. She turned ever so slightly towards his side of the valley, and pulled down the sunglasses with her middle finger. “Well, this looks bad.” 

“It looks bad?” Buck turned to him, cocking his head.

Dammit, Barton. “If she knows we’re over here, then she’s got eyes on us. If she’s got eyes on us, she’s got a team.” Clint paused, instinctively cringing. “Her team usually includes a certain blond Mack truck whose name makes you wibble.” 

Buck laughed softly, turning to look across the valley. “You can say Steve’s name.” 

“Well that certainly helps. We do have code names for him though, if you prefer.” Clint started looking skyward. There had been that guy with the wings in DC… he’d make for great aerial support. Then again, this set of hearing aids came from Natasha directly. He wouldn’t put it past her to permanently enable her tracker devices.

“Like what?” Buck’s hand gently slid around the back of his neck, the index finger pushing Clint’s chin southward. He caught a flicker of movement, so he focused on the point. 

“Well, since our last check in, we’ve been using Secret Service names for presidential families.” Oh. There he was. It was Steve all right. Natasha could redress him in a hundred different ways to hide the Dorito-ness, but nothing could hide those shoulders. Even as he walked hunched over through a crowd. He pointed Steve out to Buck and got a nod of approval.

“I always thought he could run for office after the war.” Buck hummed softly. Clint couldn’t help but focus on the warm hand still cupping the back of his neck. 

“We didn’t have a chance to come up with a code name for you though,” Clint blurted, even as he took the binoculars again. “Don’t suppose you know what a Care Bear is, huh?”

Clint stole a sideways glance, and almost laughed at the indignant look Buck gave him. “Well yeah, sounds as bad as you might think.” 

Buck didn’t say anything in response. Instead, he gently tapped at Clint’s ear piece to turn on the comm system. 

It was silence for a moment, then Natasha’s amused murmur filled his ears. “Nice of you to join us, Grover.” It had the hum that told him it was the personal channel, not the team. 

“Well, my invite got lost, and honestly, I don’t have a thing to wear.” Clint wondered if Buck’s hearing was as good as Steve’s, then just took it for granted that it was. 

There was a click, then a pause. “I’ve got him. McMahon is live.” 

“Seriously, McMahon? You gotta be kidding me!” Clint couldn’t help whining about that.

A new voice broke in. “At least you’re on the show. I got Hall. I mean... C’mon!” 

“At least you knew who that was,” Steve replied. Clint didn’t dare admit how much relief it gave to hear that steady voice.

They continued to rag on each other, letting Clint have a moment to lean forward and pinch the bridge of his nose. Banner and Stark were on the channel too, but he could also hear the whirrs of Dummy and U in the background. At least they weren’t on the ground here.

“Uh, commercial break? What the hell are you guys doing here?” he asked.

“Uh, what the hell were you thinking, doing this alone?” Stark shot back. “Not to mention dropping off the grid and making the rest of us wonder if you were…”

“I’m not Hydra,” Clint spat before Stark could finish.

“Dead. That’s what I was worried about,” Banner said wryly. “I mean, I know we’re not Natasha, but c’mon Barton.” 

“Clint,” Steve’s voice was soft, and it hurt the most. “We’re here for you.” 

That… No, this conversation wasn’t happening. Not now, not in front of Buck. Clint gently pulled his aids loose, turning off the comms. Silence filled his ears, but nothing could stop the noise in his head. This is where he missed Coulson the most. A snappy remark, something witty to flip the conversation, to break the mood and let Clint move on without tearing in half mentally. 

Buck tapped his thigh with two hard fingers. When Clint turned to him, the frown creasing both mouth and brows surprised him. Clint shook his head as he nimbly pulled the comms from the aids before putting them back in. “Sorry, what?”

“Why?” 

“I guess they don’t think I can do this one on my own.” Clint shrugged, then found a smile. From the unimpressed look on Buck’s face, it was as fake as it felt. “We need to go.” He really didn’t want Steve following Natasha down his own personal rabbit hole, he really didn’t. 

“You’re worse than he is. I didn’t think that was possible.” Clint gawked as Buck swiped the comm buds and fit one into his own ear. “Hello.”

Oh, this Clint had to hear. He swiped the second one back before Buck could put it in too, popping it in halfway through Stark going, “-ell are you?” 

“Buck?” Steve’s voice was even softer.

“Da. I guess code names are over?” 

“Steve, you know this guy?” Stark said, over Natasha asking-

“Barnes, could you give me a sit rep on Clint?” through Steve laughing. Clint lifted the binoculars again to look down the street. Steve was sitting on a porch step, making the crowd give him room with his mad laughing.

“Barton is avoiding the issue, but otherwise he is physically okay. Rogers, not so much,” Buck replied.

“I like this guy,” Banner murmured. Clint stuck his tongue out childishly. For all he knew, Stark already owned all the street cams and satellites in the area and could see every move. 

“Okay okay, everyone’s had their laugh.” Sounds of Rogers wheezing still filtered through. “Some, a little too much laughing. Are you guys gonna mess up my op?” 

“Our op,” Natasha shot back. “And you’re avoiding again.”

“You wanna run solo, Merida, you’re gonna have to retire from the gang and we get a vote too. And we say no,” Stark shot in. 

“Damn right I’m avoiding. We’re all masters at that. I let you, you let me, that’s the deal.” Cling sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. 

“Okay, I have a whole lot of professional things to say about this, but I’m here for the wings, not your neurosis. Wanna fill me in here?” the strange voice said. 

“Sam, that’s Clint that we told you about, and the other is Bucky,” Steve said. His wheezing was settling down. Clint was still annoyed at it.

“Call me Buck,” the man in question said. “What is your plan?” 

“Same as yours, probably,” Stark said a little too quickly. Clint couldn’t help but wonder what Tony knew. “Those sensors that Legolas set up gave me all sorts of surprise data, but they went quiet about the time the rest of them imploded. Oh, and Clint? Stop stealing my stuff.” 

“Technically, Fury stole those. I stole them from Fury.” 

“That guy is off the Christmas Card list, I swear.” 

Buck turned to Clint, the furrow between his brows becoming far too familiar. “Stark likes to babble. Ignore half of what he says.”

“More like three quarters,” Natasha corrected. “We traced this place down to Marchand. Is he lousy like his coffee or just independent?” 

“Don’t know yet,” Buck answered. “We had tracked other Hydra people to him.” 

“Ugh, I hate that word,” Banner murmured. 

“Who’s we? The two of you or this little gang you’ve built?” Steve asked. 

Buck stayed silent, so Clint answered, “Let’s just leave that topic alone for right now. But I got an idea how to shake this guy out.” 

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” Natasha asked.

“You might. You always get the giggles when I get punched, for some reason. But I’m going to need more toys from Stark.” Clint kept his eyes on Buck’s face, arching an eyebrow, then took a chance and signed - you want to come with me? -

“Why is it always MY toys you want to steal? Oh wait, it’s because I’m the best.” Clint could hear Stark do that two-handed finger snap he loved so much. But it was Buck’s face of surprise that had his attention. “What do you need?” 

“I’ll email you a shopping list,” Clint said as his fingers flew through explaining his plan to Buck first. The black storm clouds on his face told Clint only half the plan was making it through. “I think I need to get myself cleaned up so’s I can pay Marchand a visit.”

#

By the end of the day, Clint had a suite at a modest yet mostly empty part of town, a new wardrobe and armory reload, a flush new bank account, and a fucking shower. Vali had sat with wide eyes in the corner to watch Natasha and Sam finish the patch job on Clint, and learned approximately thirty-eight new dirty phrases in English, Romanian, and Russian. 

They’d also bathed the kid, dressed him up and kitted him out with an earwig and private com with just the five of them. Because Natasha had noticed the same thing in him that Clint had. Vali was a menace at ten, which meant at 20, he’d be spearheading his own revolution. Clint had no clue if Buck knew how much the kid was managing him or not, because they hadn’t had a chance to talk about it. And might never talk about it, depending on how this op played out. 

Marchand was dirty. He knew it. Clint also knew that Marchand knew that he knew. That’s where the fun comes in these sorts of games. 

“So, you made out okay,” Clint was telling him, pointing with a whiskey glass sloshing tuica around the room of the bar. Because hidden by the coffee shop in the corner was a bar, also owned by Marchand. And Clint had pinpointed at least five people he suspected of being Hydra scattered around the room. 

“I’ve done okay, yeah. But you’re worrying me, Clint,” Marchand replied. “You pop up out of the blue like this, without Romanov. I could have sworn the two of you would be ride or die to the end of time.” 

“Well, I thought so too, but,” Clint paused to hiccup. The tuica was excellent at causing those. “It seems I got replaced by Captain America. The First Avenger and all that crap.” Clint drained his glass, knowing Steve was listening. “Guess I’m the LAST Avenger ‘cause no one even came to check on me when SHIELD fell. No one. Nada. Zip.” Clint popped the p annoyingly, then held out his glass for more. 

“Shit. That does suck.” Marchand topped off the glass from a new bottle, shaking his head. He was decent at the sleight of hand, but Clint still saw the rope-a-dope slip into his glass. “What are you gonna do next?” 

“Well... Turns out I’m great at catching Russians. So maybe I’ll do that.” Clint threw the drink back, catching the pill between his back teeth before it completely dissolved. 

Marchand laughed. “What Russian is worth going after now? They’re broken to bits.” 

Clint leaned over to cough, spitting the pill out and pretended to gag just enough to act like the alcohol was getting to him. Then sat up, rubbing at his face. “The Winter Soldier. He’d be an excellent partner. Think of what we could do, the two best snipers in the world, side by side. I could forgive him for shooting me, if we could pull this off.” 

Marchand whistled softly. “You pull that off, you can write any ticket you feel like.” 

“Wait, I shot you?” Buck whispered down the comm channel.

“You shot several of us,” Natasha replied calmly.

“Yeah,” Clint replied, to both conversations. He sighed deep, then leaned back in his chair, letting the exhaustion play the part of the roofie. “It’ll be a fun hunt too, he’s gone to ground.”

“I might be able to help you out. Through the grapevine, like.” Marchand shrugged off hand. “I know a guy who knows a guy, all that.” 

Clint lifted his head and gave Marchand a loose grin and slurred his words. “Yeah? See? Tha’s why I came to you. You know things!” 

Two people stepped up behind him, and he wobbled a little as he turned to smile at them. “I bet you know things too!” He blinked, mostly to get his contacts to photograph their faces before the bigger one laughed and threw the first punch. 

Clint rolled with it onto the floor, landing with a wheeze and going flat. His stomach gurgled unhappily at all the liquid in it, so he let out a slow groan too.

“Thought you said this guy was the best?” One of the voices over his head asked.

“Guess Romanov was the brains after all. Or Coulson. Pretty sure he slept with both of them. C’mon, out the back door.” Now that was no way to insult Coulson’s memory. Even if it was true.

Two more sets of footsteps, then there were multiple hands lifting him up to haul him out the back door. Clint relaxed into it, mumbling a little about managing his own fly when he got there. 

‘There’ turned out to be the trunk of a car. Along with zip ties on both his elbows and his wrists behind his back as well as his ankles. He waited until the hood slammed down and the car was moving before raising his head, blinking again to dial the contacts to night vision. “Well... That went according to plan.” 

“We’re on the move as well,” Steve said, and then came the pause Clint already regretted. “Did you really think we didn’t try to find you?” 

“C’mon man, I know we were both playing switchboard through Natasha. She’d’ve said something, right Tash?” 

“Depends on if it interrupted my schedule,” she replied. 

“Ugh, why do people always talk about feelings,” Stark blurted before loudly giving them a play by play of the info he’d already found, simply by hacking into Marchand’s computer network. 

Clint sighed, then shifted a bit to find a comfortable spot. “Whatever, I’m going to take a nap.” 

#

Something was poking him in the ribs. Everything was silent too. Clint opened his eyes slowly, focusing on a pair of legs wearing shoes as a hat. And despite no sound coming INTO his ears, his blood was pounding hard on the INSIDE of his ears. He groaned softly, then felt himself swing. Bastards had tied him upside down. From the state of his stomach, he’d been out long enough for most of the alcohol to pass through his system and left him with nothing to puke with. Although those shiny patent leather boots were begging for it. “You guys are real dicks, you know that?” he said, not even bothering to pretend at this point.

Hands grabbed at him and someone flipped him over. He was tied to a chair inside one of those zero G spinners. He’d always had the best sleep in those. 

Upright, he could see Marchand’s face, a couple other guys he sorta kinda recognized, and one he didn’t. That was the one wearing the patent leather shoes. His mouth was moving, and Clint had to adjust for an accent before he caught the cadence to lip read. -If he didn’t have perfect aim, I’d wonder why you’d even bother with him.-

Marchand’s back was to him, but Clint read the shoulder shrug and the hands going up in the air as “Well, at least he’d survive the experimentation.” This guy looked like a scientist. They always wanted to experiment. Ugh. 

Marchand turned and waved his hand at someone Clint didn’t see. Their eyes locked as Marchand leered. “This will be fun. For me.” He said. What was it with these guys? Did they read the same books or something? Did Hydra have lectures on taunting your victims 101?

“You know, that’s what Stephenson said,” Clint said. He started to add to it, but a fist connected with his face and sent him spinning.

Once the people on each side of the chair pulled him to a stop, Marchand wasn’t laughing. Clint didn’t get to ask anything because the fist came again, sending him spinning again.

Clint lost count of how many times they spun. Just as he courted the edges of unconsciousness, the frame jerked to a stop and someone sprayed water into his face. He coughed and snorted as it went up his nose, shaking his head.

Marchand waited until he was looking before speaking. “I know you’ve got excellent stamina and anti-interrogation techniques to draw on. That’s boring. That’ll take days, if not years, and I don’t wanna.” Marchand poured something into a cup, making Clint both thirsty and nauseous at the thought of drinking something. “So, let’s doing this way. I’m going to assume your answers for you. Yes, you have a team. Yes, they’re tracking you. No, you don’t know where the Soldier is. Yes, you want to take him in. Yes, you also want to disrupt as much of our operations as possible. My only question I can’t answer is, how much do you know?”

Clint coughed, focusing on the left version of Marchand and blinked. “I know that if I had anything to throw, I’d gamble on the fact that you’re probably center of left, not true left like my eyes are telling me, and I’d be able to nail that ugly little mole you keep hiding with concealer.” 

Marchand froze, his eyes going hard as he balled his hands up to avoid reaching for the mole. A tremor in the frame told him someone was holding in a laugh. Clint wrinkled his nose as a trickle of water tickled its way down his nostril, then shook his head to flick it out. 

A bag dropped over his head without warning, and he was sent spinning again. “Aw, chair, no!”

#

The spinning had ended a long time ago, but the bag had never come off. The chair swayed and moved on its own. No one seemed to be monitoring it. If Clint shifted just right, he could get it to flip over so that he was on his back, not hanging upside down. 

For a while, he even played a bit, finding a way to rock himself. That ended up in a short nap. Mostly, he was bored. Waiting was okay when he had a bow and could watch everything, but this time, he only had his sense of motion. He kept falling asleep unless the chair moved again. It was a neat bit of sensory deprivation combined with random jolts of reality. Someone put a lot of thought into it. 

At some point, the chair moved. It swung independently of his weight, which means it rolled. The bag muffled scents as well, so he couldn’t tell if they left the building, got into a van, or just took a stroll around the warehouse floor. Which was the point, he assumed. 

When the chair stopped, he was upside down. Someone spun it, keeping him on his head but to face a different direction. Either the team had made their move, or he needed to stall again. Wouldn’t it be nice if for once they were ahead of schedule? 

Someone jerked the bag off. Clint shook his head and blinked, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the sudden light. First impressions were a lot of knees in combat pants and feet in combat boots. His hands itched to grab some of the knives he saw strapped to ankles. 

The legs moved out of the way and the dweeby little scientist guy from earlier came into view. He was smiling. That was bad. Clint’s personal rule was never let those guys be happy. 

The chair moved, and he was upright again. He could feel the clanks of someone locking it into place, so something new was about to happen here. Something to his left moved and he turned to watch. No less than six men moved as one, pointing heavy assault rifles inward. Fear clenched at Clint’s stomach for the first time since he walked into Marchand’s bar, however long ago that was. There was only one person inside the circle, but they came along calmly. Clint just got a glimpse of long stringy brown hair at first, but he knew what it meant. He’d failed. 

The fear crawled up Clint’s spine and froze his entire body when he got a good look at Buck’s face. He was blank, just like Natasha had described him in DC. It was like the person he’d met no longer existed, if they had at all. “No, what the fuck did you assholes do?” Buck looked at him directly, catching his eyes and just blinked. There was no spark of recognition, of personality, of nothing. Natasha had warned him of brainwashing, but this was way worse than he’d thought. “Oh, fuck you. I’m going to rip you apart when I get out of this!” 

Marchand stepped between them, laughing. “Will you?” he mouthed carefully. “I think this will be very educational for you, Barton.” Then he stepped away, letting Clint scream and rage without acknowledging him again.

Buck was led to another type of chair and strapped into it. Techs crowded in on Buck’s left to deactivate the arm. There was no emotion on his face until the halo above the chair was brought down to fit against his face. A tremor ran through Buck’s body, some buried memory making itself known. 

But nothing happened. Clint remembered to breathe again as the techs milled around the machine, poking and doing their thing, leaving Buck to stare at Clint while Clint cried. 

He’d failed. He’d come up with this plan in order to keep Buck as far away from these assholes as he could, but something happened and here they were. And Clint has no clue where they were, or why the others had failed them both. 

Now Clint understood why Buck came to him, not to Steve. Steve would move heaven and earth to find him, that’s true. But he’d die trying to set Bucky free again. 

There was no way Clint was going to let these assholes use Buck as a weapon again. And if it meant stopping him instead of setting him free, so be it. That’s what he wanted, when he was under Loki’s thumb. Natasha had found a loophole. 

Clint didn’t know if there were loopholes here. But he did know the difference between freedom and being free. 

His hands itched for his bow. He was marking each face so that he’d know who needed an arrow through the eye. 

That scientist guy? He’d get two, for whatever he did to erase Buck from his own mind.

#

There were only the two techs across the room now. One was working on Buck’s arm and the other was fumbling around on the machine. Clint had a feeling that they were speaking to each other, but as neither were looking at him, he had no clue. 

Buck was sitting calmly in the chair. He was still buckled in on his three normal limbs. The tech working on his arm had ripped Buck’s shirt apart so that he could work on the shoulder too. Half the exterior plating was sitting on a table beside them. He still showed no emotion or personality whatsoever. He was watching Clint back as he waited for an order. Sometimes the tech turned his chin to work higher up on the shoulder, but otherwise, they treated him like an inanimate machine. 

Clint tongued the gag in his mouth, trying to work it loose or work some saliva free. They’d gagged him at some point when he wouldn’t stop yelling and cursing at them. It made the new cut on his lips sting a little, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t had before. 

Clint tensed when the chair frame pinged, then started moving free again. Neither tech looked up as he started to move slowly. Only part of the frame was free as he turned slowly around. His last glimpse of Buck was to see the first mark of curiosity in hours, a small quirk of the eyebrows, but he still didn’t speak.

He whipped his head around hard to see who was moving him. At his level, there wasn’t any one, so he leaned forward as far as he could to look down. 

A very angry Vali was sitting under an improvised cover of a packing blanket pulled across his back, lockpicks in his hand. The point of which went into his ankle. Clint bit down on the gag to keep from yelling and balled his fists up. Vali smirked again and did it again to make Clint jump, then mercifully went to work on the ankle restraint next. Once that was unlocked, he rolled the chair around to reach the next lock.

Clint was glad of the blanket because once Vali got him free of the chair, he went down like jello. None of his muscles were happy about the abuse and went back and forth between being limp noodles and tight with cramps. He kept biting on the gag to keep from crying out in pain. Vali, at least, was patient. The kid also had a pair of ears for him, courtesy of Natasha, if he had a guess. His hands shook as he put them on, but he finally had sound again.

Vali was muttering in Romanian softly, keep an eye out. He was very unhappy with this plan, and Clint had to agree. Wait, what?

“Hold it, they planned this?” He whispered, furiously.

Vali turned to him, his face pinched tight. “He got tired of your friends arguing how to find you and came after you. He chose this, because of you!” 

Clint winced, even though the punch that accompanied the words was barely worth the name. “Why the fuck did you let him do that? I’m not worth that!”

Vali paused, blinking a bit. “I can’t always stop him. I’m only ten!” 

Clint sighed, then nodded. “Fair enough. Tell me what happened. Why did he decide to do this instead of following the plan? And did you bring anything else with you?” 

Vali kept his report short and sweet. The car Clint had been in had gone to a warehouse, but when they stormed it, there’d only been his clothes and hearing aids left in the trunk. Which meant all the trackers they’d made sure to include. That made Clint pause and look down to make sure he was wearing clothes. To his relief, they’d put him in standard blue sweat pants and t-shirt.

Buck had immediately sent the kids out to all the other known Hydra points, and Mihai had been the one to catch a glimpse of his unconscious body through a window. He’d spent the night on the roof in the rain to keep from losing him again. 

“Your friends, they’re doing things on the computers, finding out the,” Vali stumbled a bit on the unfamiliar phrase, “money trail? But Tata Bak, he said they were taking too long. He said they were going to put you in the lightning chair and we had to stop that.” Vali paused, then dug into his pocket, holding up a length of cord. “I cut this from inside. They have to take it apart to replace it.” 

Clint grinned and leaned forward to kiss the top of Vali’s head. “Brilliant! Did Tata say what the chair does?” 

Vali smirked at the kiss, then paled at the question. “He says it’s worse than the trigger words. The triggers, they make him go small in his head. He sees everything, but they control. He can do nothing until he finds a way to break out. But the chair, he says it wipes him out completely. If they fix the chair, he will never be Tata Bak again.” 

Loki’s ghostly giggle filled his heart with ice, but Clint swallowed it down, then held Vali by the shoulders, shaking him a little to make the kid look up at him. “I swear to you, I won’t let that happen. I’ll figure something out. I always do.” 

Vali nodded, his eyes wide. “When I found him, he was blank, like that. It took him months to learn to be who he is. Months!” Vali pushed at Clint’s shoulder, then dug something out of the fold of blanket behind him. It was one of Clint’s bow cases. 

“I want that story, when we get out of here. But right now, I want you to go high. Find the way out and make sure it stays open.” Clint popped the case open to check to see which quiver he had. It was one of Stark’s creations, with compression blocks to open up for reloading. The quiver itself held nearly 100 arrow heads of various types. “Oh baby, I am so happy to see you.” 

Vali looked at him oddly, then shook his head. “Your friends should be here soon. Are you going to blow up the building?” 

“If they don’t get here in time, yeah. Definitely blowing the lightning chair.” Clint shifted, looking around the zero G chair to see if anyone had noticed anything yet. He could hear footsteps, discovery in five seconds. He turned to nudge at Vali. “Go on, don’t get caught. I’ll get Tata Bak free.”

The kid actually saluted before he disappeared. Clint grinned. He was keeping this one. He’d fight Buck for him and everything. 

Two deep breaths to settle himself, then he popped the bow free and swung out into the open. 

The footsteps he’d heard were two guards patrolling. They both went down with headshots. The two techs turned finally. The one that had been working on the chair machinery went down with another arrow through the eye socket. The second one, he shot down into the foot. He’d asked Tony for a silly putty arrow and he’d delivered. The stuff rippled out and tripled in size, gluing the tech to the spot. One more arrow, an acid arrow this time, went straight into the heart of the machinery behind the chair. He smiled at the sizzle and crackle as the acid foamed over the works.

The whole time, Buck sat calmly and watched him. Granted, it only took thirty seconds for all the shots, and the tech he hadn’t killed still hadn’t had a chance to scream. Clint turned to survey the area for the first time. 

It was an open circle, with his zero G chair across from Buck’s seat. Beyond there was stacks of boxes, a couple with Stark’s sensor strips still on them, and behind that was a wall. To his right though, lots of movement. Someone had realized things were wrong. Clint identified four different cameras and took them all out with arrowheads that Stark had designed. Chips that disrupted the signal, then redirected it to Tony’s attention. Maybe THAT would put a fire under their asses.

A fifth arrow went into the floor nearby, setting a trip wire with electrical charges that used the same tech that Natasha’s Widow Bites did. Only then did Clint turn back to the tech.

“I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you did before today. You have a choice. You can reactivate his arm right now, and I give you the antidote to free your foot. Or you can leave it the way it is, and you’ll stay stuck to the floor when the building goes up into itsy bitsy pieces.” Clint pulled a little bottle out of the side of his quiver and shook it in the tech’s face.

The dweeb turned and immediately went to work on Buck’s arm. “Smart choice.” 

The buzz of the trip wire sounded, and Clint turned to zip arrows into eye sockets again. This time the assholes got gunshots off that went into the roof. Clint winced, and hoped Mihai wasn’t still up there. 

He turned back to Buck. His face was still blank, but his head was tilted a little bit. “So, hi, what do they call you?” 

“Soldat.” Buck’s voice was calm and flat. 

“All right, Soldat. I’m in charge now. Are you okay with that?” Buck simply blinked at him. Clint took a deep breath and poked the tech in the shoulder. “What the fuck did you assholes do to him?”

“They... His handler gives the orders! You have to have the correct transfer phrase for him to follow you! I don’t know it!” The dweeb finished zapping things inside Buck’s arm and started resealing plates into place.

“Fuck. Okay. Soldat!” Buck turned to look at him again. “Don’t shoot me! Vali said to follow me.” More footsteps sounded, so Clint dropped down to his knees and slid out to drop the new set. This time they had body gear on, so he had to go with acid and explosives. And they definitely weren’t going to be stopping. 

Clint pushed back over to Buck, fighting to unbuckle his ankles first. He looked up into the blank face, but now it wasn’t so blank anymore. The brows were furrowed, and the head cocked. “C’mon Tata Bak. You remember Vali. He’s your kid, he belongs to you, just like me.” 

“Tata Bak?” the Soldat asked quietly. 

“Yeah, that’s you.” Clint looked over at the tech. Their fingers were shaking as they were fitting the last plate into place in between glancing over at Buck and Clint. Buck was curling his fingers experimentally. “C’mon, finish that and you can have this antidote.” Clint left him to that, so he could break the last clamp off Buck’s arm.   
A whistle from above and a whisper of sound behind him were all the warning he had. Clint flipped backwards while bringing his bow around, flicking shots out as fast as he could. He’d left Buck uncovered for half a second and that fucking scientist was shouting something. Clint sent an explosive arrow into the back of his mouth, then ducked as it triggered. Someone shrieked as brain matter and bone splattered everywhere. 

Six more arrows and the rest of the assholes had scattered. Clint had no clue how many were left but he still hadn’t seen Marchand. He turned to check on Buck. He was still sitting in the chair, but he was free and his arm was complete. He was frowning at his hand, flexing it slowly and watching it like it was a brand new thing. 

Clint moved over slowly, handing the bottle over to the tech but otherwise ignoring him. “Soldat? Tata Bak? Bucky? Who’s in there?” 

Buck turned to look up at him, blinking from a blank look into a frown. His eyes glanced over at the headless form of the scientist, then back at Clint. Oh, that didn’t look good. 

A wisp of memory in Natasha’s voice. “Cognitive recalibration. I hit you really hard over the head.” 

Clint twisted and swung his bow like a baseball bat just as Buck lunged at him.

#

Clint was good at waiting. He’d always been good at waiting. Waiting for mom and pop to remember that he and Barney existed and needed things too. Waiting for foster parents and waiting for people at the carnival. Waiting for Trickshot to teach him. Waiting to take the perfect shot. Waiting for the right moment. Waiting for Natasha to walk into his life. Waiting waiting wait… 

Now he was wedged into a corner behind the machinery, waiting. Buck was asleep still, pulled into his lap so Clint could monitor his breathing. Every so often someone would pop their head in and he’d get to pop an arrow into an eye socket or throat. They tried throwing grenades at one point, but Clint shot those back out at them. That had made him giggle. 

Buck shifted and Clint tightened his leg, not wanting to lose the warmth just yet. Buck put off a lot of heat and Clint was so tired. 

Another head poked in and Clint held his shot. They weren’t good at waiting, and they really wanted their Asset back. Buck was moving a little more, shifting closer to actual awareness. Two heads now, easing closer, working in tandem. Clint lowered his bow, showing his exhaustion and palming a different arrow. He was running low on explosive arrows, so now he was getting to the trick arrows. 

Buck’s breath shifted. He was awake, holding still, looking over the situation. Clint had no idea who was in the driver’s seat. The two soldiers stepped closer, edging around the corner of the machine.

Clint raised his bow and sent one arrow through the first guy, the mini rocket activating at just the right time to jerk him back as it tore through him into the second guy before sticking into the wall behind them. Blood splattered everywhere, and Clint grunted softly in satisfaction. 

Buck froze, so Clint eased up on the pressure from his leg. “So, hi there. I’m Clint, if you don’t remember.” 

The warm body relaxed, and Clint could have sworn he felt a chuckle. “This looks bad, I know. So, uh, just hear me out?” 

Buck shifted, turning to look at Clint, but kept his body pinned to the wall. “Okay.” 

“First, who do I have the pleasure of addressing?” Clint smiled hopefully, but the warmth was back in Buck’s face.

Buck laughed, a real laughed, then leaned in to brush his lips against Clint’s. Oh. “Not the Soldat.” 

“No, no you’re right. He wouldn’t do that. Can I do that again though?” Clint leaned forward, chasing Buck’s lips. 

“Mmm, so you make a habit of keeping time during battles a lot?” Those wonderfully warm lips were pressing back, and they felt so fucking good.

Clint couldn’t help but groan into the kiss, then froze when he heard another set of footsteps. These were heavier, so he kissed Buck hard then craned his head around and raised the bow again. Buck shifted to turn, pressing his back against Clint’s chest and raised a gun underneath Clint’s bow. 

“Yeah, there are bodies. Are you su—hey woah wait NO guys!” Sam raised his hands up, eyes going wide. Clint laughed and dropped the bow, his arms going weak despite hugging Buck’s waist. 

“Hey guys, I found them. We’re gonna need some help getting them out. They were right where Vali said they were.” Sam stepped through the blood pools carefully, making a face. Clint found he didn’t care.

“I can walk,” Buck growled. Clint whined and let him go. The world turned really cold without Buck’s body against his. Then he was being lifted up to his feet. He yelped and clung to his bow, gingerly standing on his own. A couple idiots had gotten lucky and he had two new holes in his body leaking blood sluggishly, but he could stand. 

“Hey Sam? Can we get out of here now?” Clint asked. 

“Yeah. Nat and Steve are cleaning up the nest at the other end and Tony’s got the rest of the building on lockdown. We’re good to go.” 

“Oh awesome. I want a pizza and about a week of sleep. Can we do that?” Buck laughed softly, then practically carried him across to a cleaner spot on the floor. 

“I think you might’ve earned it this time,” Sam said from behind them.

Clint paused, tugging Buck to a stop as well. “Wait, where’s Vali?” 

“He said you told him to go high,” Sam replied. They turned, looking in the rafters, then Buck’s warm hand slid around his neck again, thumb gently turning to where the kid was sitting on a walkway, legs swinging in the air.

“Wave to your kid, show him I keep my promises, will ya Buck?” 

“Mmhmm.” Buck did, then turned to lightly kiss Clint’s lips. “You do.” 

Clint ignored Sam’s gasp of delight, then turned back to the lightning chair. “I got one more promise to keep.” He carefully selected two more arrows. The first was a special one that he shot into the computer drive, a preloaded USB sending a virus flying through the machine to corrupt it and any other machine it might be connected to. The second went into the seat of the chair, acid spraying out to eat at the plastic and metal of the frame. They stood there, watching, then Clint launched a third arrow, lighting the whole mess on fire. “Okay, time to go, that’s uh, toxic if we breath it too long.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Barton!” Sam cursed, and all three of them broke for the door.

Buck laughed the whole way. 

#

Clint got the pizza. And he got the sleep. But because of the sleep, he didn’t get to see the reunion between Buck and Steve. Natasha filled him in later. “It was sweet. I knew Steve was an old sap.” 

“So now what?” Clint asked.

“Well, Buck refuses to leave his kids, so Steve’s looking for a place here in Bucharest.” Natasha was poking at the remains of the pizza, looking for one that hadn’t been mauled the night before. 

“Huh.” Nat froze, then turned to look at him, so he smiled as innocently as he could.

“What are you thinking of, Barton?” 

“Oh, you know… things.” And he winked at her before rolling over to go back to sleep. 

~

Natasha was the best. Not only did she run interference for him, she’d left a car unlocked and fueled up just outside their villa. It was bad enough having to climb down into the tunnels with his various gunshot wounds. Having to do so after public transportation would have been the worst. 

Mihai had met him before he’d gotten halfway down the tunnel. The kid gave him a shy smile, so Clint wrapped him up in a tight hug. They still hadn’t shared a single word, but they’d managed to save each other’s lives. That was a good basis for friendship in Clint’s world.

Each of the kids hopped up to squeeze his hand or give him a hug on the way to Buck’s nook. That surprised him. He hadn’t thought he’d spent that much time or made that sort of impression on them. Or else Vali made the whole adventure more adventurous than it actually had been. 

Speaking of, Vali was exactly where he expected him to be, on the crash pad where Clint had woken up after the first raid. He was flipping a knife in his left hand, practicing, while playing with a cell phone in his right. Clint wondered if it had been a gift or a lift when he saw the Stark logo on the back, then decided he wasn’t gonna ask.

Buck was at his make shift desk, so Clint just slid in across from him. “How you feeling? Any leftover wonkiness?” Clint tapped his forehead, cocking his own head to the side.

Buck made a face at him, then paused. “Steve said, you had experience with mind control before?” 

“Yeah. Fucking sucked. Still hear the asshole giggle sometimes when things go bad.” Clint dug his hands into his pockets, balling them up tight to keep from over reaching. “Different type from yours.” 

“Still sucks,” Buck murmured. He made a bookmark in his journal and carefully put his pen away. “You planning on staying in Bucharest too?”

“Well, if you’ll have me around. I mean, it’s nice and Hydra free now. That’s a really big plus.” 

“But?” Buck was staring at him, waiting. It felt like Natasha giving him the grill job.

“But I’ve been running since SHIELD fell. From a lot of things. It got pointed out to me recently that I was very, very wrong about some of those things.” 

“So, you’re going to go back.” Buck didn’t move but Clint could feel him pulling back.

“I should. I mean, I’ve got a good team. And I am one of the best at what I do. Maybe the best, if my competition’s decided he’s retired for good.” Clint gave Buck a half smile. Two best shots in the world, looking at each other over a plywood plank.

“And that’s based in New York?” 

“Yeah. Half in Manhattan, at Stark’s place. Half at my place in Brooklyn. Bedford-Stuyvesant really. I like having my own space.” Clint shrugged.

Buck nodded, then looked around the tunnel. It still looked the same to Clint, but now that Buck had woken up again, he wondered if it looked different to him.

“Maybe I could come visit?” Buck asked shyly, then looked back at Clint. 

He nodded, then shrugged. “Or maybe you could come with.” 

“I can’t. The kids… I can’t leave them.” Buck pulled back physically this time, curling in on himself. 

Clint laughed, shaking his head. “Buck, you don’t have to. I own an apartment building! You can bring them with us!”

This time Buck did look up, and there was a new look in his eyes. “With us?” 

“Yeah. Cause I really don’t want to leave without you.” Slowly, carefully, Clint pulled his hands free of his pockets, so he could lean forward and brace himself as he kissed Buck tenderly. 

The kiss was returned hesitantly, then an arm snaked out and roughly drug him over the plank, knocking it down in the process. He landed into Buck’s lap with a laugh, hugging him tightly. “I promise, I’ll treat you right. Give you space when you need it and everything. And hey, I have a dog!”

“A dog?” Vali yelped, then they had a third face in the middle of their hug. “Tata Bak, I want to go to America now! I want a dog!” 

Clint laughed, then elbowed Buck gently. “Besides, you’re gonna need all the help you can get with this menace.” 

Buck laughed with him. It felt good, even when Buck asked, “Yeah? Which menace? Seems I have two now.” 

“Huh. Maybe. That’s why you’ll have Steve too?” And Natasha, and Sam, and Bruce, and Grills, and Simone, and Katie, but that’s way too many names to say while Buck is squeezing him this tight and Vali’s bouncing against his wounded calf, asking him about Lucky. Somehow, Buck still gets the last word. 

“Dammit. That’s three!”

~  
To be Continued.

**Author's Note:**

> Whoopsie! Google translate fail here. I've been advised that this is actually Hungarian, not Romanian. I'm leaving it as is right now, but I reserve the crazy brain bug that might go back and fix it. 
> 
> Sunt supărat - I'm smothered  
> Gyerünk - Come on  
> Sajnálom - I'm sorry  
> Mi a neved? - What's your name?  
> A nevum Vali - My name's Vali.  
> Szia - hello  
> tata - papa  
> Maradj csöndben! - Stay silent!  
> Süket vagyok! - I'm deaf!
> 
> Ok, in case you were confused, yes, I had code names. You probably figured out that Natasha used character names from Sesame Street for Clint. He used weather events for her. They both used Secret Service code names for Presidential families, as mentioned. Stark got Disney Villains. Not used: Bruce got popular pet names. Thor got popular kids cereals. In chapter 2, they were using co-hosts of the Johnny Carson show. 
> 
> The kids. I'm gonna get real on you. Romania does have a huge street population at the moment, stemming from their Soviet era policies that still poison today's thinking. If you live in Europe and liked this story, pop some real kids some help? Thank you.


End file.
